











Class 




Book . f~j % ! 7 

Copyright N° W 


COPYRIGHT DEPOS£T. 
































































































Warfares of the Heart 

Short Stories of the South 



iWiVA 


v.v.v 




v. 


A Southern Belle 





Warfares of the Heart 

Stories of the South 


By 


Allen Polk Houston 


ILLUSTRATED 


THE BRANCH PUBLISHING CO. 

CHICAGO 



Copyright, 1917 
By 

ALLEN POLK HOUSTON 


0 


v CV 

" fr 

ft C ^ 


\ 

iv 


nFG 28 1917 

"0|O. 

©CI.A479712 

Ti^ • f • 


DEDICATION. 


This book I dedicate to my children and my 
friends with love and affection. 

The stories in it are mostly true, differ- 
ing from fact only ivhere the writer/ s personal 
knowledge and information as to locality and 
time may not be exact. 

They come from the heart in its Warfares ; 
in its struggles with itself, and attempt to 
establish and direct the motives that have 
ever, and shoidd always prompt good men and 
women, e’en through Death, to uphold the 
higher principles and the nobler virtues of 
Life. 

ALLEN POLK HOUSTON. 



Aunt Julie 

My Ole Colored Mammy 




CONTENTS 


Page. 

Foreword IX. 

My Ole Colored Mammy 1 

Uncle Henry 10 

My Southern Mother 18 

A Stormy Courtship . .. 36 

My Little Sister 42 

Did He Rock The Boat 49 

Two Brave Men 55 

The World Is Truly Small 60 

A Thrice Told Tale- 64 

I Am In Mourning To-day for An Old Friend 69 

Would You Have Lied 72 

A Southern Belle 104 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Southern Belle Frontis. 

Aunt Julie VI. 

Uncle Henry 11 

The Old Homestead 25 

My Little Sister 43 

The President’s House 67 

V 

Louise 82 

Paradise Row 110 



FOREWORD. 

It has been the Author’s effort, in writing 
this book of the Southland, to give to those who 
may read it, a better knowledge of a section of 
onr country “fair as the roses that bloomed,” 
and a people who lived like lords, with their 
vassals and retainers before the outbreak of the 
Civil War. 

Its stories of Southern lore, its legends of 
brave men and fair women touch cords in the 
human heart that respond to the memories of 
a day now past ; to the humor and faithfulness 
of the old slave, the loves, lives, sorrows and 
aspirations of a once distinctive people. 

Of a people who strove for a government of 
their own and not finding it, bowed to the sor- 
row of a “Lost Cause,” returned to a Union of 
the States, and became one solidified and insep- 
erable country. 

Of a people who endured the waste, death and 


IX 


desolation of war, passed through the fiery 
furnace of woe, and then “came back” to help 
build not only for themselves but for those who 
had oppressed them, a government today the 
strongest of Democracies. A government, the 
emulation of two hemispheres, with one of its 
own people its Chief Executive. A government, 
the leader, the provider, the banker of its allies 
across the sea ; the controlling influence, the fac- 
tor, the adviser, in the present great emergency, 
upon which the very future advancement of the 
world’s civilization depends. A government 
that directs not only ourselves, but those with 
whom we are associated in common cause of 
war to establish freedom, real freedom, God’s 
freedom, for the oppressed, and Democracy in 
place of Autocracy. 

With such purpose, with such motive, the 
South, the land that now blossoms as it did be- 
fore the Civil War, presents its sons. From the 
city, from the town, the village, the hamlet and 
the farm they come to offer themselves — Sens 
of the South ! 

In the training camp, in the cantonment, you 
will find them; in the army of our common 
country and in khaki they march to be trans- 
ported to the trenches. 

Behind them they leave not only mothers, 


wives and loved ones, but a rehabilitated South, 
homes about which the roses twine, 

“A land where the Cypress and Myrtle 

Are emblems of deeds that are done in 
their clime, 

A land of the Cedar and Vine 

Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams 
ever shine, 

Where the Citron and Olive are fairest of 
fruit 

And the voice of the Nightingale never is 
mute, 

Where the tints of the earth and the hues 
of the sky 

In colour though varied in beauty may vie, 

Where the virgins are soft as the roses 
they twine, 

And all save the spirit of man is divine.” 

Only the tombstones of their ancestors can 
remind them of those who died for a Lost 
Cause, and with such Time has dealt kindly, for 
the wild ivy in the churchyards of the old plan- 
tation clings to the names that are written 
there, covering them with banks of green. 

In publishing this list of stories, it was the 
author’s intention to have written several 
others illustrative of the grand order of the Ku 
Klux Klan and the faithfulness and affection of 
the “old slave.” However, with his publisher 
behind him it was impossible. As one of our 
best known writers has said, there are but two 
things on earth that a brave man should be 
afraid of : One is your mother-in-law, the other 


XI 


your publisher. So I bow to the dictum with 
apologies and best possible grace. 

Despite this I feel I must say something of 
the faithfulness, the loyalty, the love and af- 
fection of the old slave for his master which can 
never be adequately or truly described, it mat- 
ters not how facile be your pen. It was born in 
him, and would ever have remained, had not the 
vitriolic pen in malice,, jealousy and lack of 
knowledge, dipped into the blood of a happy 
people, pictured a situation that did not exist 
and magnified rare incidents of cruelty into 
happenings of daily occurrence. Such misrep- 
resentation was largely responsible for a civil 
war that gave the slave a questionable freedom, 
and threw him upon his own resources. 

Had Mr. Lincoln lived, the South feels today, 
this grave question would have been settled in a 
manner other than it was, for he was its best 
friend and when his immortal soul “ passed 
on”, in the 4 ‘Hell Hole” of Reconstruction, 
this once fair but desolated land labored, with 
“Pelion on Ossa piled”, in throes even worse 
than was the war itself. 

Then it was the slave, who before in his rec- 
ognized ignorance, by his Master had been 
guided, not driven, was influenced by the 
Carpet Bagger, the Skallawag, the low white, to 

xii 


turn upon his best friend, and to demand social 
and political equality. 

Then it was he not only began to insult and 
humiliate his former owner, but with the help 
of a National Legislature, and through South- 
ern States controlled by these deluded slaves, 
strove to legislate against him, to disfranchise 
him, to sneer at the supremacy of the White 
Race, ignore the principles of the Constitution 
of 1776, and in the attempted amalgamation of 
the races, defied the very laws of God. 

About this time there appeared a Rainbow in 
the sky. The supremacy of the White Race was 
about to assert itself. The men of the South 
had risen again — for their women, the fair 
women of the South; for themselves, doubly 
oppressed. 

As the sun went down, through its setting 
rays a new star appeared. It was the star of 
the Ku Klux Klan. All the best, all the rem- 
nant of a southern race flocked to its ranks. 
From the hilltops at midnight the bugle rang 
out and to its clarion call the clans gathered, 
and clothed in white, like spirits in the night 
they rode, they righted and they regulated. 

They protected their women, they shielded 
and guarded the negro who remained faithful 
and conducted himself properly, — and they 

xiii 


finally overthrew a government in the South 
that was totally based on negro suffrage. 

The formation of this great order was an ac- 
cident, as has been brought out in the history of 
its formation. It originated in Pulaski, Ten- 
nessee, shortly after the Civil War. The South- 
ern Negro in his ignorance, his superstition, 
was easily impressed. Ghosts had more ter- 
rors to him than firearms; the muffled tread 
at midnight of the horse of the 4 ‘white faced 
rider,’ ’ “a spirit of a dead Confederate just 
from Hell,” if by chance it should be heard by 
the poor misguided, ill advised and misdirect- 
ed soul, meant a quick flight to the swamp, 
hiding of his gun and a return to his cabin the 
day after, when the sun stood high in the 
heavens. 

After the purpose of the Ku Klux Klan had 
been effected, the order fell into the hands of 
violent men, who became dangers, not only to 
the original founders of the Klan, but to many 
others. With the original Ku Klux these vio- 
lent orders were sometimes confounded, which 
was indeed a grave mistake. 

To this great order of Ku Klux, operating as 
it did, does the South largely owe its regenera- 
tion. 

With the aid of its sister order, the “ White 


XIV 


Camelia, ’ ’ the carpet-bagger, the scallawag and 
the low white were driven from its desolated 
land, and today the negro, unless disturbed by 
outside influences, works happily and content- 
edly at his task. 

You hear his voice so full of melody as it 
rings out in the cotton fields; his laugh as the 
day’s work is done. Sorrow unless forced up- 
on him does not live in his heart, and soon 
passes, and with his nature, when properly 
guided and directed by the white man of the 
South who understands him, he lives each day 
through, satisfied, forgetting the yesterdays, 
nor thinking of the tomorrows. The warmer 
climate of the South suits him; the open 
country where the sun shines. Segregation in 
large cities means disease and death to him, 
and with his ignorance, so easily susceptible to 
evil influences, quickly leads to moral and phys- 
ical decrepitude. 

Once more in the South prosperity reigns, 
prosperity from better business knowledge 
than ever before, prosperity born of suffering 
and wisdom, not caused by the inflated value 
of its cottton and its products alone, but 
through a situation largely brought about and 
created by the people of the South themselves. 

May the pall of war, that once more threatens 


XV 


this fair country, this brave people, be removed, 
and Peace with honor, even though sacrifice 
must be met and blood be shed to make endur- 
ing, blessed Peace, that Peace that passes all 
understanding, the Peace of God, soon come 
again is the trust and hope of the Author. 

ALLEN POLK HOUSTON. 


XVI 


MY OLE COLORED MAMMY. 

H E WAS an aristocrat with his silvered hair. 

I could see it in many ways, the shape of 
his hands, his feet, polished in manners, “born 
with a silver spoon in his mouth.” All in- 
dicated his birth and breeding. In conversa- 
tion, in the pathos of his voice, yon caught 
glimpses of his heart. 

With a smile upon his face that seemed to 
live there, and a look of truth that rested in his 
eyes, as we travelled in the “smoker” he told 
me stories of himself, of his early life, and none 
so impressed me as did that of “Aunt Julie, 
my Ole Colored Mammy.” 

“Aunt Julie was so black that ebony paled in 
her presence, but her soul was so white that I 
used to think the undriven snow encased it, 
and that God’s face always shone upon it. She 
did not know what selfishness meant. It was 
not in her vocabulary. She just thought only 
of her little white children that my mother had 


1 


2 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


put in her keeping, of their welfare and their 
happiness. 

4 ‘ When I was a little fellow, and in health 
had not had a fair start, the doctors ad- 
vised that I should live in the open air con- 
stantly, so my grandfather sent to one of the 
plantations in North Carolina and brought 
Aunt Julie to Tennessee to look after me, and 
next to the saving of her soul she thought that 
her chief duty in life. After breakfast every 
morning we wandered over the many acres of 
my father’s country home, and when the 
weather permitted and the water was not too 
muddy we fished with ‘bent pin hooks’ in the 
creek, or lunched in the woods in the shade of 
some great spreading oak. 

“One day when the fishing was bad, I fell 
from the high bank into the deep water and the 
‘splash’ woke up Aunt Julie, who, after pull- 
ing me out with perfect imperturbability said, 
‘ Look a here, chile, if you want to learn how to 
swim you had better take your lessons when 
my eyes is open, not while I’m asleepin’, and 
the fish ain’t a-biting.’ 

“She carried no ‘meal in her mill sack’ and 
she didn’t want her boy to be ‘raised on 


MY OLE COLORED MAMMY 


3 


mush. ’ In her ideas and her methods she was 
indeed like the Spartan mother. Aunt Julie 
knew all the birds, their different calls, and she 
could imitate them. She could sing and cackle 
like a hen, and she understood the squirrel lan- 
guage. In times of danger she could chuck like 
the mother quail when she calls her little ones 
to shelter and yields them the protection of her 
body and her wings. 

4 4 She was afraid of nothing but 1 ghosts’ and 
the devil, and she had all the superstition 
characteristic of her race. You could not get 
her to walk beneath a ladder, and Friday was 
the one day of the week she dreaded and 
claimed should have been stricken from the cal- 
endar. She made me 1 touch wood’ whenever 
I bragged about getting well and growing 
strong and big like father, and, if I wasn’t 
washed every Saturday night in the great 
green and white painted bath tub to be ready to 
go to church Sunday, she’d say — 4 something 
wrong was sure going to happen before 
mornin’.’ 

“Aunt Julie was a contradiction of all that 
Harriet Beecher Stowe ever wrote of slavery 
as a whole in the South. She knew the history 


4 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


of her family for generations, her forebears 
had been lawfully married by an ordained 
minister of the Gospel, which the records of 
the Church and 4 slave book’ showed, as was 
the custom among all the plantations in North 
Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee. 

“No husbands and wives in her family had 
ever been separated through the slave market, 
and none of their children sold except of their 
own volition, when they wanted to marry into 
another plantation. And then it was arranged 
between their respective masters. 

“It was Aunt Julie’s boast that her grand- 
father had been the finest ‘whip’ in all North 
Carolina and behind him in ‘old master’s’ 
coach-and-four had ridden all the ‘grandees of 
the country. ’ 

“Aunt Julie was a Christian, and she tried 
to instruct her charges in the teachings of the 
Master. I do not believe she ever had an evil 
thought, and the ‘Golden Rule’ — ‘to do unto 
others as you would be done by’ she endeav- 
ored to have govern her life. While orthodox 
in her heart and her belief, I sometimes thought 
the Mosaic law, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth 
for a tooth’ appealed to her more strongly 


MY OLE COLORED MAMMY 


5 


when her temper was aroused than the gentler 
teachings of the Gospel. 

‘ ‘ As a disciplinerian, she taught ns how to 
be neat in our dress, polite and considerate of 
others, especially the old; she abhorred a lie. 
Lying, to her, was as bad as stealing, and if 
mother had to whip ns for telling one, she 
gladly held onr little feet so we couldn’t kick. 

“At other times, when the peach tree switch 
was wanted, you could never find her. When 
she had ‘ weaned her chickens’ and ‘old Miss 
and the Marster’ needed her services, she 
cared for them, and many is the time I have 
heard her scold my mother because she would 
not wrap herself sufficiently in cold weather 
and because she wore the soles of her shoes too 
thin when the day was wet and rainy. 

“In the same cemetery where those of us 
who have ‘gone before’ are buried, Aunt 
Julie’s body lies, and it is a hallowed spot. She 
was one of the family, and even though she was 
black, her heart was as pure, if not purer, than 
the white children she raised. What virtues 
were born in us she helped develop, and if her 
teachings bring the reward they should, she 


6 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


will meet with full returns, for her life was a 
labor of love. 

“We taught her how to read, hut it was a 
work of years and affection. At the suggestion 
of a lesson in spelling she would have some- 
thing to do for ‘old Miss' and she would hide 
herself from us, or go to sleep sitting in her 
chair. She claimed she w T as so tired, and it was 
time for us to go to bed. The book of Nature 
— the outdoor world — was her chief teacher, 
rather than printed books, and she used to say 
she needed or cared for none other. When 
mother could not be found, Aunt Julie heard 
our prayers, and after she had tucked the cover 
close about us in the wintry weather, she would 
sit in front of the wood fire in our nursery and 
sing and croon to us until we fell asleep. 

“It was after the shadow of the war fell upon 
the South and all the men had to go away to 
fight and leave the women and children unpro- 
tected, that Aunt Julie's faithfulness, her brave 
and loving instincts best showed themselves. 

“Living in the country away from any town 
or city, practically between the lines of two 
great armies, the ‘old home' was constantly 
subjected to depredations of all sorts, and at 


MY OLE COLORED MAMMY 


7 


times its inmates threatened with violence and 
murder by irresponsible, drunken and half- 
starved raiders and bushwhackers, made up of 
the deserting refuse of both armies. 

‘ ‘ Every night, and often during the day, the 
doors were barred and the windows bolted, and 
I well remember one of those terrible nights, 
when the outer doors had been broken in and 
my mother with Aunt Julie had gathered the 
female help and the children in her bedroom, 
and how, armed with double-barreled shotguns, 
like sentinels they stood behind its doors and 
kept these desperate men at bay until help 
came from an encampment close by that had 
been told of our danger by a stable boy. 

‘ ‘ Often at night, when the drums sounded the 
‘long roll’ in anticipation of an attack and we 
expected the house to be burned or shot to 
pieces, situated as it was between the firing 
lines, Aunt Julie would pull us from our beds 
and as she dressed us, instill words of courage 
in our little hearts and tell us of the deeds of 
ours and her ancestors, and why should we be 
afraid of anything or anyone except the devil. 

“I remember her taking me ‘visitin’ * one 
day to the home of a colored family, and while 


8 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


we were there some drunken federal soldiers 
raided the house and tried to carry me away. 
Now, Aunt Julie up to the time of her death 
never thought the ‘war was over.’ She de- 
spised anyone who wore the ‘blue/ By in- 
stinct she was as gentle as a dove; when her 
charges were threatened she was a tigress. She 
claimed that her heart was gray, that she was 
not only rebel intuitively, but ‘rebel born’; so 
tearing me from them, she pushed me behind 
her, and like the old mother hen when the hawk 
comes, sheltered and covered me with her body, 
while with a chair she drove them from the 
house. 

“After her charges were ‘grown up’ Aunt 
Julie would take Sundays to herself. Her 
finery had accumulated in wondrous heaps. We 
could not laugh at her, but from the windows on 
Sunday mornings we would watch her start to 
church, with a bonnet built before the war and 
a dress of last year’s making. Aunt Julie wore 
her clothes in ‘layers/ When she went ‘a 
visitin’ ’ she wanted to put them all on at one 
time. The Queen of Sheba could have taken no 
more pains than she did when it came to the 
making of her toilet, and when she went forth, 


MY OLE COLORED MAMMY 


9 


Solomon in all his wisdom could not have clas- 
sified her. 

“We loved her and we respected and revered 
her. My father ‘set her free’ two years be- 
fore the war was over and paid her wages and 
provided for her in his will. She had proven 
faithful, had watched over his children, had 
safeguarded not only them but their mother, 
and in God’s paradise, I’m sure, she holds an 
exalted place, and there as she did here, is min- 
istering to the joys of the ‘child angels’ who 
form the ‘Choir Invisible.’ ” 

I caught the flash of his eyes and saw that 
they were bedimmed with tears. Quickly he 
turned to the open window and I left him medi- 
tating upon the past and the love and virtues of 
Aunt Julie, his Ole Colored Mammy, his coal 
black mammy. 


UNCLE HENRY 

H E WAS a gentleman in every acceptation of 
the term — a Kentucky gentleman — and his 
wife was a grand-daughter of Henry Clay, “the 
great Commoner.’ ’ “Ashland” at Lexington 
was his home, and he graced it as would a Ches- 
terfield. Among women he was Prince Charm- 
ing; with men Richard, the Lion-Hearted, and 
as a boy I often thought their respective 
charms and graces only feebly imitated the vir- 
tues of my Uncle Henry. 

It was his custom to give to his nephews and 
myself, whom, though not a blood relative, he 
honored with his affection, his surplus guns and 
bird dogs, and he often took us with him on his 
hunting trips, one of which I happily recall. 

We were quail shooting in the Piney woods of 
Alabama and the Governor of the State made 
up our party of four. One night after a hard 
day’s tramp, and a well-cooked dinner on my 
uncle ’s private car, in which we often travelled, 


10 





4 .< 




* 7 TC. -• 

■v »; ~ 

» V .* - 


’ • -• • 






Uncle Henry 




t 



12 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


the Governor, who had been a colonel in the 
Confederate army, entertained ns for an honr 
with stories of the war, and in language ful- 
some and reflective, related striking instances 
of how with his command he had licked the 
“damn Yankees’ ’ on numerous occasions in 
battle. 

Now Uncle Henry had been an officer in the 
Federal army. He was a major on General Hal- 
leck’s staff, of which the Governor was not 
aware, and each time he used this term his em- 
phasis grew more pronounced, and I could see 
my uncle wince as from a knife wound in his 
breast, but he was the host and the Governor 
was his guest, so he sat and listened and he 
smiled, Chesterfield that he was. 

Very still we boys sat, and as we watched 
Uncle Henry’s smile, we “smelled danger” and 
wondered at his self-control; so to relieve the 
situation and stay an explosion, one of us told 
the Governor that our uncle was a major in the 
Federal army. He seemed not to hear, but he 
did, and to even up and square himself with his 
host, he began to tell stories of the “Rebels,” 
and they followed in rapid and voluminous suc- 
cession, and it looked as though he applied 


UNCLE HENRY 


13 


every qualifying and damning adjective in 
Webster’s unabridged to those whom only a 
moment before he had “lauded to the skies.’ ’ 
But the smile remained upon Uncle Henry’s 
face. 

After the gentleman from Alabama had 
grown tired of talking and seemed somewhat 
winded, there was a long pause, and then he 
suggested a game of poker, to which Uncle 
Henry, always agreeably, quietly assented. It 
was the gravest mistake of the evening the Gov- 
ernor had made, for my uncle was one of the 
best poker players in all Kentucky, and we had 
been his pupils. He loved the game, not so much 
for the money, for he had an abundance of that, 
he loved it because it suggested a contest of 
nerve, wit and luck, and all three were his. He 
gloried in matching his wits against those of 
others. I have seen him look you in the eyes 
until your lids grew weak, your chips look like 
monuments, and as your judgment flickered in 
“mental nowheres” you laid down three queens 
to a “bob-tail flush.” 

On the morning after the first night, the Gov- 
ernor wired for more money. He said he had 
been “wrecked,” and after the third “session” 


14 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


the affairs of State became so pressing he had 
to bid us good-bye, and in parting Uncle Henry 
smiled a satisfied smile and made one of us lend 
the Governor of Alabama ten dollars to get 
home on. 

Uncle Henry was tall and sinewy, handsome 
and graceful. He was one of the best dancers 
in the State when a young man, and fair women 
vied with each other for his dancing favors. He 
was a fox hunter, and his hounds reco'gnizing 
the blast of his horn, leaped to its call and 
used to think that as its music reverberated 
throughout the hills, the whippoor-wills and the 
night birds kept still to listen, and the foxes 
took to their holes. 

He did not care to ‘have the pack “pick up the 
fox.” He ran not for its death, but for the 
music of the chase, and when with bulging eyes 
and straining limbs, well packed, like demons in 
the night, the dogs on some hidden stand would 
pass us, in excitement I have heard him call 
out, “Run, Brer Fox, run, for Hell’s lets loose 
and the Devil is after you.” 

I remember once being with him on a deer 
hunt in the mountains. Our stands were close 
together in a beautiful runway, and I wandered 


UNCLE HENRY 


15 


over to where he was, as the hounds on a cold 
trail had passed out of hearing, and there was 
little prospect of the quarry’s doubling and 
coming back our way, when unexpectedly over 
the ridge of the mountain we could hear them, 
grouped in full cry, heading for our hiding 
place. 

It was too late to return to my stand, so to- 
gether we waited, nor was it long, for we could 
see the deer coming in leaps down the bed of 
the stream that ran in the middle of the run- 
way. One of us moved, and detecting it, as a 
deer will do, suddenly he stopped within easy 
range, and for a moment there he stood, a great 
stag with wonderful antlers, his eyes blazing, 
his sides flecked with foam, for he had been 
hard pressed and was running long. Before I 
could fire, Uncle Henry gripped my arm and 
said, 4 ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, he wants to 
live, and he’s human like you and me.” 

The tenderness in his heart dominated him, 
and the gentility of his soul ruled and directed 
him in thought and action. He seemed always 
to say the right thing, and when occasion de- 
manded he acted as should a gentleman to the 
manner born. 


16 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


Once in the Pendennis Club in Louisville, 
Ky., I was standing near him, when a member 
approached, and asked what he thought of the 
silly behavior of a beautiful and prominent wo- 
man, who, at a dinner in the Club the night be- 
fore, had indiscreetly taken too much wine. 
Uncle Henry looked him straight in the face 
and while his eyes blazed like coals of fire, said, 
“Sir, I never think, when a cur dog barks; I 
swear; nor do I discuss a lady in a club, sup- 
posed, mark me, I say supposed, to be made up 
solely of gentlemen. The ‘ ‘ cap was a good fit ’ ’ 
and turning upon his heel the member walked 
away. 

In Uncle Henryk vocabulary there was no 
such word as fear. He was a born leader of 
men. When his mood was ill, others dared not 
cross him. He brooked an honest difference of 
opinion, but with the disputations of a fool he 
had no tolerance. Charity lived in his breast 
and his heart was attuned to gentleness and 
compassion. I have seen him bandage tenderly 
the broken leg of a dog and bind the wing of a 
wounded bird, and I have known him to risk his 
life to save that of one he loved. 

The New Testament was his text book and 


UNCLE HENRY 


17 


the Sermon on the Mount he endeavored to 
have regulate his life. He was human, he loved 
the great outdoors, “the call of the wild, ,, the 
smell of the smoke from the camp fire by the 
side of some running brook with its murmur- 
ings to lull you to sleep, the soughing of the 
wind through the tree tops, the wooded country, 
the trackless plains — all thrilled and appealed 
strongly to him. 

I loved and cherished him. He was my dream 
man come true — my model of character and 
manhood, of truthfulness and honor. On the 
spot where those who loved him placed the 
frame that carried his immortal soul, the grass 
grows green and the ivy clings tenderly, as in 
gentle lullaby its leaves whisper and commune 
together, while the wild violets bow their heads 
and lend fragrance to the loving memory of my 
Uncle Henry. 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


H E was a good sportsman. He had played 
the game of life bravely and fairly with- 
out discredit or reflection upon himself, and he 
did not allow the knowledge that he had passed 
the allotted three score and ten years to dis- 
tress or disturb him, for his mind was clear as 
a bell and his heart was young with the joy of 
living and the milk of human kindness. 

He tried to forget that he was practically 
alone in the world, for sorrow had hit him heav- 
ily and the u man with the scythe” had shown 
him little mercy. Still he smiled. He felt there 
was work for him yet to do, a mission to per- 
form, somewhere, he knew not how nor when. 
He was just ready waiting at his post, until 
called and wanted. All his life he had helped 
make the world a better place to live in, and 
with that endeavor he knew that he was still 
needed. 

In giving life a cheery tone he gathered 


18 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


19 


crumbs of satisfaction and pleasure for himself, 
while dispensing loaves of cheerfulness to those 
who sought his company and his friendship. 

His thin gray hair indicated that the tres- 
passes of time had not touched him lightly, and 
the wrinkles in his face spoke of worries, but 
his laugh did not advertise them, it just 
smoothed them out and killed them. I watched 
him in admiration, and sitting next him at the 
club, I listened while to a gathering of his 
friends he told this story, as silence fell upon 
us all and memory brought back to him pictures 
of the past. 

“It is hardly proper to talk of one’s self in 
this busy day life of ours, this haste, this econ- 
omy of time. Our interest centers chiefly and 
selfishly in things of daily occurrence and mat- 
ters that more particularly concern ourselves, 
and we have neither opportunity nor disposi- 
tion to listen to the happenings that make up 
the yesterdays of long ago. 

“We are making history too fast for mind 
and body every day and every hour, and therp 
are few rest spots to stop and think as we movo 
along, but as you insist upon a story, I shall be- 


20 


WARFAKES OF THE HEART 


come personal and tell you of ‘My Southern 
Mother and her Nine Sons/ 

“I do not believe there ever were six hand- 
somer men than were six of my devoted broth- 
ers, types of a mother who loved them as she 
did her soul, each tall in statue, powerful in 
frame, wonderful in strength and worshipful of 
her who had borne them and taught them the 
highest duties and principles of life. 

“There had been nine of us boys, two had 
‘left us’ in early boyhood, but mother always 
counted them as though they were still with us, 
and I can hear now her dear voice, as when 
often asked, ‘How many boys have you, 
Madam V She would say ‘nine, seven are with 
me now, the other two have gone visiting/ 
“There had to be a doctor in every large 
southern family, so my father was a physician, 
and therefore himself watched over his immedi- 
ate household relatives and slaves, which latter 
were indeed a charge, as we were often sub- 
jected to epidemics of cholera on the different 
plantations. At such times night after night 
and almost daily I have known him to work and 
spend his time in the negro quarters, armed 
with calomel and quinine, the only medicines we 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


21 


knew for this terrible Southern plague. So his 
duties were most trying, and necessitated his 
absence from home to care for his slaves, of 
whom he owned more than one thousand. 
Whenever any distress befell them they always 
wanted ‘Old Master.’ 

“So he went, and to mother fell chiefly the 
charge and the love duty of raising and ‘bring- 
ing up’ her family of nine boys. She was in- 
deed a mother. Throughout the country wide 
she was called the ‘Grand Duchess.’ No priest- 
ess of the Delphic oracle was more reverenced 
than was she by all the whites and negroes, nor 
could one have exercised more care and watch- 
fulness over the charges placed in her keeping 
by my father. Cornelia, the ‘Mother of the 
Gracchi, ’ was only positive and forceful. 

“My mother was not only forceful and un- 
bending in the discharge of duty, but her heart 
was so great and overflowing with the milk of 
human kindness that there was just enough of 
her, that was mortal, to keep her on earth until 
God’s mission for which she was intended had 
been performed. 

“One day Robin, my boy brother, with his 
brown curly hair, while dressed in his hunting 


22 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


clothes, as he mounted his horse to go quail 
shooting, caught the hammer of his gun in his 
coat and with its discharge the load of birdshot 
took effect beneath his chin and he fell at his 
horse’s feet. My mother picked up his bleed- 
ing form and laid it upon the sofa in the hall, 
and there she stood in her white dress, stained 
with his dying blood, and as she looked upon 
him, seemingly she turned to stone. ‘The Man 
With the Scythe’ has no mercy and seems to 
know not where to stop; so shortly after this 
he called again and my father, with the respon- 
sibilities that rested upon him in his endeavor 
to do life’s work, broke down in health and he 
‘left us,’ and then the two boy brothers ‘went 
away. ’ 

“After that mother took two leaves from the 
dining-room table and removed the four empty 
chairs and we sat closer together. Then some 
years passed, and a respite from further sor- 
row fell to my mother, and with her trusting, 
beautiful Christian nature the old sweet smile 
came to her dear face again, happiness reigned 
once more, the dead past was further off, and 
the tempest seemed tempered to this shorn and 
loved one, our mother. 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


23 


“It was a custom after two of my brothers 
married and went to Arkansas to live, every 
summer to meet again at the Old Homestead 
and mother always celebrated the reunion with 
a great ball, when the house almost groaned 
with my brothers ’ gentlemen guests. They 
slept on cots, on mattresses laid upon the bed- 
room floors, and in tents in the grove. Such 
was our hospitality. Every family almost, in 
Tennessee, was to be represented at the ball, 
and when midnight came, for that was the hour 
of retiring, the grove with lamps and twinkling 
candle lights moving about the tents, looked like 
an army of fireflies darting among the great 
oak trees. It was a tented city about to go to 
sleep. 

“My brothers ’ friends came, it seemed to me, 
from everywhere. The Homestead was twelve 
miles from any town or city and was nearest 
Franklin, Tenn. It was either here or to Nash- 
ville mother sent to buy our groceries or have 
her shopping done. We did not miss the rail- 
road station close by the modern country home. 
Everybody drove in fine teams, with wondrous 
horses, and the limestone pike leading to 


24 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


Franklin seemed hardly to have a rut and to be 
only ‘ a short stone ’s throw. ’ 

“A high spiked iron fence for a mile or more 
lining the pike, with a double gate for an en- 
trance, so heavy that it almost took two men to 
open it, fronted our home and a wide graveled 
road wound among the great oak trees for an- 
other mile before reaching the Homestead. You 
could not see the house from the pike. It was 
indeed beautiful, the work of master hands with 
wondrous taste, built round of red brick with an 
immense white painted dome, every bedroom an 
outside room with green painted slatted shut- 
ters and window sills of immaculate white. Im- 
mense white hollow wooden corrugated pillars 
reaching to the roof surrounded the entire 
building with bases that rested upon blocks of 
limestone, forming a wide walk that encircled 
the house. The front steps were of smoothed 
and polished stone, and the great front door of 
massive oak with brass knockers and my fam- 
ily’s coat of arms above them. On entering you 
faced the great round hall with its waxen floor 
with the skins of many wild animals wonder- 
fully tanned and cared for, almost covering it ; 
paintings hung between the doors, that in 







* 








« 








26 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


equally measured distances opened from the 
rounded walls, and above these was a covered 
and small pillared encircling gallery with lat- 
ticed railing, upon which the guest bedrooms 
opened. 

“Double stairways lead from the hall to the 
gallery, and it was a custom at all the great 
balls for the older people to gather there and 
watch their loved sons and beautiful daughters 
dance the quadrille, the minuet and the Vir- 
ginia reel. 

“Great preparations had to be made for the 
giving of this 4 Reunion Ball/ Servants had to 
be brought in from the nearest plantation, and 
all the cooks mother could furnish or borrow 
were gotten together. Caterers were sent from 
Nashville, and the odor from the cooking of 
black cake permeated the air ; diff erent colored 
jellies were needed for the pyramids, and jel- 
lied meats had to be made and put in the ice- 
houses and dairies. 

“Mother delighted in the happiness she was 
giving and presided like a general over her 
forces. Every day before luncheon all my 
brothers ’ gentlemen guests would gather in the 
big hall where a table had been set with silver 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


27 


goblets of uniform size. Near these were two 
large cut-glass bowls filled with sweet mint and 
cracked ice, sugar, long-handled spoons and de- 
canters of aged whisky from my father’s cellar. 
Each gentleman prepared his own julep, and 
they laughed, and they chatted, but no one 
touched his drink until the rustle of mother’s 
black silk dress was heard on the stairway, and 
as she passed them on the way to luncheon, lend- 
ing approval as it seemed, to their merrymak- 
ing, each cavalier bowed and, lifting his glass 
to his lips, drank to the health and happiness of 
my mother. 

4 ‘ For weeks before all the lovely girls invited 
to the ball had been provided with escorts and 
engagements made for the different dances, 
cards for such having been inclosed with their 
invitations. The home darky band had been 
drilled for months, and its black prompter felt 
his position more important than that of the 
State’s Governor. With his band he was to al- 
ternate in the dances with the best white band 
sent from Nashville. 

“Now it was a rule of the house that its mem- 
bers and guests should always be present at 
breakfast. My mother requested it, and none 


28 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


of ns ever disappointed her unless from sick- 
ness. If there was a dance the night before, 
breakfast was served a little later. There were 
no modern house party breakfasts running all 
morning, the servants had to be considered, and 
the great house was conducted with a system 
that reflected my mother’s good and consider- 
ate management. 

‘ ‘ On the morning after the ball at the break- 
fast table my brother Tom’s chair was vacant. 
None of us could find him in his room. His bed 
had been untouched, and while we waited a car- 
riage drove slowly up the graveled walk. I can 
hear now the sound as it crunched the gravel 
beneath the wheels, and when it stopped at the 
front steps, four gentlemen got out and then 
they lifted my brother’s lifeless body gently 
from the inside. Tom ! my debonair, my hand- 
some, my brave brother, whose life was so char- 
acterized by grace and lightheartedness! We 
gathered around mother and hovered over her, 
but she pushed us aside and without a tear, 
she took her boy in her arms and held him 
close to her breast, and it seemed as though 
while she stood there her hair assumed a whiter 
tint, and we knew her heart was broken. 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


29 


“On the evening before at the ball after sup- 
per in the midst of the dancing, while ‘ joy was 
unconfined’ and happiness reigned supreme a 
gentleman guest stepped upon the skirt of the 
dress of my brother’s partner, tearing it almost 
from her body. In anger my brother expostu- 
lated with him and condemned him for his care- 
lessness. Whereupon he was forthwith chal- 
lenged to meet in the early morning and in an 
exchange of shots my brother’s life was taken. 

“After this my mother seldom spoke, and as 
two of my brothers were still on the plantation 
in Arkansas our family was reduced to four. 
Then Tennessee seceded from the Union and 
the tocsin sounded and the cry of war rang out. 
I was in Nashville when the State’s first Con- 
federate regiment was mobilized. How well I 
recall that day! The regiment was composed 
of the flower of Tennessee’s young manhood. I 
can see them now with their beautiful gray uni- 
forms trimmed with gold braid. One of my 
brothers was an officer in it, the other a private. 
Their flag, the ‘ Stars and Bars,’ had been pre- 
sented to them by the ladies of Nashville, and 
as they marched to the train to go away, led by 
fife and drum playing 4 Dixie,’ the young wo- 


30 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


men showered flowers upon them, the old men 
waved their handkerchiefs, while mothers 
smiled to help conceal their rising tears. 

“It did not look like war. It seemed a frolic 
rather than a tragedy. How unlike a scene I 
witnessed last week in the suburbs of a great 
city, on a country road, a regiment of sun- 
burned and hardened young men, as fine if not 
finer than those I saw march away in the War 
of the Rebellion under the 4 Stars and Bars. ’ 
There were no flowers showered upon them, no 
handshaking, no kisses from loved ones, no 
band to lead them, no martial air to inspire 
them, no fife nor drum to stir their souls, and in 
uniform tread they marched under ‘ sealed or- 
ders’ — where they knew not — to be secretly 
loaded to a transport for ‘somewhere in 
France.’ Their country’s flag, the ‘Stars and 
Stripes,’ hovered over them ! They loved it and 
what it stood for; and that was enough. It had 
called and they had answered. 

“Dangers in front of them, dangers beneath 
them, dangers above them, dangers every- 
where, but like the six hundred at Balaklava 
they were soldiers, real soldiers and their in- 
structions were ‘to do or die.’ No smiles 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


31 


radiated from their faces. Death was the only 
spectator, and he stood on the side lines. 
Still, with determination, with set purpose, 
with full knowledge of their undertaking, 
they marched, without good-byes. Not a sound 
except the tramp of their feet upon the hard- 
ened street. Not a word. 

“They were hurrying to the trenches to 4 No 
Man’s land’ from which few return — to the 
mouth of hell ! And as I watched them it re- 
minded me of that one other march, the saddest 
the world ever saw, that march to Calvary, and 
each gun they carried seemed a cross. One died 
for men that we might live ; the other, the sol- 
dier, was ready to follow his example. Brave 
men, young, wonderful men, true Americans, 
and I honor them as more than worthy descend- 
ants of those who have made history and char- 
acter for their country ! 

“Heroes, character for their country! He- 
roes, do you call them? Yes, more heroes than 
the dead heroes of the Civil War, than was 
Washington and his few faithful followers at 
Valley Forge in the war of the Revolution that 
terrible winter, in the hardships they endured, 
and when all looked so dark and hopeless ! 


32 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


“My two brothers in Arkansas enlisted with 
the troops from that State and after my re- 
maining brothers had gone with the first Ten- 
nessee regiment mother and I were left alone 
in the old homestead. I was then fourteen, and, 
although I wanted to go as a drummer boy, my 
brothers would not allow it and insisted that I 
remain at home to care for mother. She her- 
self made no protest — God bless her sainted 
soul! 

“War with its terrors, with its desolation, its 
waste, its destruction, its growing famine, its 
heartbreaks, its deaths, raged around us for 
several years and then I could wait no longer, 
so I left mother with some of the old faithful 
servants and obtained a commission in the 
army of Tennessee. Shortly after this, one of 
my brothers, who had become a general, took 
me as an aide upon his staff. I always believed 
it was with the idea of watching over me and 
keeping me out of danger. 

“One day when he foresaw that the Battle of 
Franklin was fast coming on and would soon 
take place, he sent for me and, handing me a 
sealed package, ordered me to deliver it to a 
wounded officer in a hospital at Columbia, and 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


33 


on my return to stop by the homestead and see 
how my mother fared. I delivered my package 
at the hospital, as instructed, and on my arrival 
home I found her well and, after stabling my 
horse for the night, we retired at a late hour. 
In the morning I arose early and was much sur- 
prised to find my mother standing on the front 
steps of the house looking into the distance with 
her hand shielding her eyes from the sunlight, 
my horse close by, saddled and waiting. 

‘ ‘ Turning to me she asked ‘ did you hear the 
booming of cannon an hour ago! I have had 
your horse brought to the door. ’ As we talked, 
again they opened roar, and pointing with her 
other hand in the direction of the sound, she 
said, ‘my boy, the battle of Franklin has be- 
gun ! ’ 

“ ‘Go, and go quickly! Your country needs 
you ! Don't you hear her calling V 

“It is not necessary here to rehearse this 
battle. History tells us what it was. My 
brother, at the head of his brigade, was wound- 
ed twice, once in the foot, but he never stopped 
for that. A few moments later a minnie ball 
gave him a scalp wound and falling stunned 
from his horse, Gen. Pat Cleburne, who was 


34 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


riding near him leaped to his rescue, and while 
he wiped the blood from his forehead and 
pushed back his hair, he, too, was wounded.' 
Later on my brother’s horse was shot from un- 
der him, killed by the explosion of a shell, and 
this explosion crippled him for life. Then my 
other brother, a captain in this same battle, was 
shot through the cheek, marked for life, and I 
at the battle of Perryville received a wound 
which has given me this twisted arm. 

‘ ‘ Later on came the surrender of General 
Lee, and the war was over. There was another 
home-coming, and mother waited to receive her 
boys in the Old Homestead. First came my 
brother, the oldest of us left, on crutches; 
then my brother marked for life ; then my two 
brothers from Arkansas, wasted, worn and 
haggard; then I with my crippled arm. 

“After this came the < reconstruction days’; 
then the Ku Klux ; and then peace — real peace 
— the first we had known since the war. 

“So we went to work; work we had never 
done before ; work to reconstruct our homes, to 
restore our wasted fields, and what that work 
has done for the South shows today in the whirr 
of its cotton mills, its manufactures and its gen- 
eral prosperity, for now it blossoms as does the 


MY SOUTHERN MOTHER 


35 


rose. It is because we are Americans — Ameri- 
cans under one flag, Americans of one solidified 
country that we love — that we had the courage 
to ‘rise Phoenixlike from our ashes/ 

“Years have passed since that sad homecom- 
ing, and I am the last left of my Southern 
mother and her nine sons. Yet I see her now 
with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun- 
light, standing at the portal of her heavenly 
mansion looking across the ‘Great Divide’ wait- 
ing for me, as at the portal of the old home- 
stead she stood once before, and while the can- 
non boomed out, hear her voice, ‘ Go, haste, my 
son, your country needs you! Don’t you hear 
her calling!’ 

“Over the family table, in the household pro- 
vided in God’s land, mother still presides, and 
its leaves have all been put back again, but 
there is one vacant chair, and that’s for me, the 
youngest, the baby boy — the little Benjamin of 
my brothers.” 

After he had finished this story, we put our 
arms around him, and there was not a dry eye 
to be found, and the picture of that dear mother 
brought home to each and every one of us sweet 
memories that soften the heart and make the 
whole world akin. 


A STORMY COURTSHIP 

T HERE was a twinkle in his eye and merri- 
ment in his soul. He had friends everywhere 
and his experiences were innumerable. He was 
a veteran of the Civil War and had served with 
General Lee through his entire campaign up to 
the time of the surrender. Of course, he was a 
good talker, and with a smile upon his face that 
radiated through its wrinkles, he told us this 
story. 

It was just before the outbreak of the Civil 
War and the South, especially Louisiana, had 
attained its highest known state of prosperity. 
The cane and the rice fields for several succes- 
sive years had blossomed like the rose, and the 
only worry the planter had was the high stage 
of the Mississippi, and whether the levees could 
hold the great body of water penned in behind 
them. 

One night, at a great ball given at her 
father’s homestead, in honor of the State’s most 


36 


A STORMY COURTSHIP 


37 


lovely debutante, noted for her beauty both at 
home and in New Orleans, with the neighbors 
gathered from the surrounding country to do 
her homage, and while all went 4 4 merry as a 
marriage bell,” the report came that one of the 
levees had broken and a crevasse of great mag- 
nitude, impossible to stay, had opened; that the 
country above was deeply flooded, and that 
homes with their inmates were being washed 
away before the deluge. That the river itself 
had changed its channel and would soon bear 
down upon them. 

With minds already charged with fear of 
such an happening, terror seized upon the 
guests of the ball and 4 4 there was hurrying to 
and fro and gathering tears and tremblings of 
distress and cheeks all pale, which but an hour 
before had blushed at the praise of their own 
lovliness.” 

Now this ancestral home of the ball was 
erected upon an eminence, and had stood the 
shock of the Mississippi’s waters on two for- 
mer occasions. The house was colonial in style, 
built of stone and brick, two stories in height, 
with immense stone pillars in front facing a 
long graveled drive with shrubbery on either 


38 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


side. It was surrounded by great trees whose 
overhanging limbs grew lovingly about its roof, 
sheltering and protecting it as they clustered 
over and above it. 

In the hurry that ensued, the mad rush in ve- 
hicles to get away, the queen of the evening, 
this beautiful young debutante, who had fool- 
ishly gone to her room to make some change in 
her apparel, was overlooked and left alone with 
her partner of the last dance. 

Only one who has seen or been caught in an 
overflow of the Mississippi can imagine the de- 
struction done and the rapidity with which the 
country is flooded by this great uncontrolled 
body of water, distributing itself over miles of 
most beautiful and thickly populated country. 
In many instances houses are swept from their 
foundations, trees uprooted and property of 
every description destroyed. Nor is it an un- 
common sight to see whole cabins, sometimes 
with occupants sweeping by, caught as were our 
young friends by the rapidly rising water. 

Finding themselves in this dilemma, caught 
in this trap by the swiftly rising flood, from the 
first floor of the old home they took to the sec- 
ond, and from the second to the roof, and as 


A STORMY COURTSHIP 


39 


the water rose higher, they crawled upon the 
overhanging limbs of those friendly trees and 
there, perched like crows, they waited for the 
coming of the morn. 

Each gust of wind periled their unstable 
berths, and as they swayed and rocked and 
swayed, this gentle maiden unconsciously, in 
the roar of waters beneath them and with the 
thought of safety more perfect and profound 
than the limbs afforded, in intermittent spells 
would grab and cling to her partner of the 
dance, whom she only slightly knew, until the 
wind quieted, when suffused with blushes, 
quickly she would release him. 

Love is born at first sight, I’m told. In this 
instance, it was not born at all — it was just 
there, responsive and protective, or probably 
being dormant, sprouted when watered. Who 
knows? With her, mayhaps, only sleeping but 
still concealed, with her cavalier growing, but 
not yet blossomed. Occasion, it seems, some- 
times develops a condition as yet unexpressed, 
or of which previously we were not aware. 

As the night progressed and this trying game 
grew strenuous, from doleful crows they be- 
came cooing doves; and while not a football 


40 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


match, from a “ single grab” it became a 
“double clutch” — the storm lost all its terrors 
and the waters seemed to murmur rather than 
to roar. 

Of course, in this tumult of love there had 
been a courtship on a swaying limb with the 
mad Mississippi underneath, a mute courtship, 
an expression without voice, a proffered and 
longing look, and as to its acceptance, the lover 
seemed to read it while the wild wind divined it. 

So it was sealed somehow, hermetically 
sealed, like a jar of peach preserves. Had there 
been a love speech, only Monsieur Cupid could 
have heard it — or it was drowned by the roar 
of the raging waters. 

On the afternoon of the day following these 
lovers were rescued from the swinging dove- 
cote, and I never knew whether they were glad 
or sorry that their rescuers had come so soon. 

At another ball, given many years after at 
this old home in celebration of the silver wed- 
ding of mine host and hostess, the same living 
and central figures of this story, it was my for- 
tune to have been present and to have heard 
again this stirring tale, when “my lady,” blush- 
ing as did the rose when first it viewed the 


A STORMY COURTSHIP 


41 


morn, sweetly said, that only John had crawled 
upon the trees, and then to rescue some people 
in distress; that the cooing and billing dove 
story, like the dovecote, was only fiction; and, 
that her husband had never kissed her in dry 
weather or in wet — not even once — before they 
w^ere married. 

Be that as it may, I have told the story as I 
first and always heard it. I dislike doubting a 
good woman, yet I never could understand why 
my old friend John never said a word and only 
smiled. He knows, but he’ll never tell r for he 
would die rather than contradict his still beau- 
tiful, loving and devoted bride. 

Someone touched the bell, and after we were 
served, we drank to this dear couple now living 
and surrounded with many blessings in the city 
of New Orleans. 


MY LITTLE SISTER. 

S HE was so beautiful with her big brown eyes 
and her curly hair, with the tints that Ti- 
tian painted and there was something about it 
that set you thinking of that deep, brief, hectic 
“twilight in which Southern suns fall asleep.” 
The pink of the ripened peach lived in her 
cheeks, and the color of the red rose kissed her 
lips. 

In the bow of her Cupids mouth, in even 
rows, like polished ivory her teeth were set. 
The glow of health showed itself in every 
movement of her body. The purity of her soul 
shone through her eyes, and the goodness of 
her heart poured out itself like a river of sun- 
beams, peeping through gently fluttering 
leaves, when the sun sets low. 

Everybody loved her, all the birds and ani- 
mals seemed to know that she was their friend. 
In the garden of the old home, with its box- 
wooded, rose-bordered paths, when she walked, 

42 




My Little Sister 




\ 




i 1 1 




44 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


the pigeons from the barn wonld fly and gather 
round and about her, and if there was a wound- 
ed or broken leg among them, they seemed to 
know that she would care for it, wrap and bind 
it. The house dogs walked of their own listing 
with her, and constituted themselves with 
fidelity and loving watchfulness her guards and 
keepers. Even the wild birds seemed not to 
fear her. 

All beautiful life communed and harmonized 
with her, the roses reached out for her to inhale 
their fragrance, and the violets while besteeped 
with the morning’s dew, shook their velvety 
heads that they might stand the straighter to 
greet her as she passed. There did not seem 
enough of her, that was like the rest of us to 
keep her long, and I know my mother felt this, 
as did we all, so we watched over her and 
guarded her as a loan, a precious loan from 
Heaven. 

When she was born, it was with a smile, 
not a cry as are most of us, and the smile 
clung to her so lovingly through babyhood that 
it made dimples in her cheeks. In girlhood her 
laugh reverberated throughout our home and 
catching its contagion your frown became a 


MY LITTLE SISTER 


45 


smile, your worry a nothing, your distress a 
joy. 

Her voice was attuned to Heaven’s music 
and sometimes when she sang to me, her older 
brother, at night time in the moonlight, as we 
sat upon the steps of our Southern home, I 
thought she was immortal. Often now in my 
dreams, I hear again that voice, as with her 
hand in mine, she sang, 

Lead, kindly light, o’er moor and fen, 

O’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone, 
And with the morn those angel faces smile, 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. ’ ’ 

One afternoon, I think she was sixteen then, 
without telling any of us, she went to the 
stables and had a coachman saddle a young 
blooded colt, hardly broken, and started alone 
for a ride. She was as fearless as she was beau- 
tiful, and she loved this wonderful and high- 
bred colt, that my brother had given her. Blood 
counts with such animals, as it does with indi- 
viduals, and their dispositions vary and change, 
and at times they show moods, loves and tem- 
pers most unaccountable, such as do that gent- 
ler and opposite sex to ourselves. 

I saw my sister canter down the graveled 


46 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


road leading from the house. Her riding alone 
I gave hut little thought to, as she often did so, 
but I felt she was unwise to try out an unbroken 
colt. I did not know, I could not see, but the 
Grim Body Servant, Death, rode by her side. 

That evening she did not come back in time 
for dinner, and we waited and wondered in 
dread, and in bated breath discussed the late- 
ness of her returning. My brother ordered the 
alarm bell pounded, calling for all the help in 
the negro quarter, and we began our search for 
my little sister. By the old and unused ferry, 
where the narrow river ran deepest, we saw 
tracks of her horse, and on the opposite bank, 
tangled in his bridle, among the bushes, we 
found him with his neck broken, but no signs 
of our loved one could we see. All that night 
we vainly looked for her. 

Early in the morning, where a spring branch 
flowed into the river, we found her body hidden 
in the wild watercress that grew there in great 
profusion. The same dear smile was upon her 
face that she was born with, and it looked as 
though she were only fast asleep. Lovingly my 
brother and I took her precious body in our 
arms and began our sad return to the old home- 


MY LITTLE SISTER 


47 


stead, where mother waited for our coming. It 
was almost a mile to the house, and on our re- 
turn we moved slowly with all the negroes fol- 
lowing, and our loved one ’s old colored Mammy 
led them in crooning and singing in soft plain- 
tive tones the songs she had sung to her prec- 
ious charge in babyhood. 

When we passed the old-fashioned garden 
that my little sister so dearly loved, the negroes 
pulled the roses from the bushes, and as they 
sang they threw them in our pathway. There 
is sorrow and a crown to sorrow, but the sorrow 
that comes from a lost and loved one, leaves a 
void that human existence can never fill. The 
thought and the “ touch of a vanished hand and 
the sound of a voice that is still ” lingers, and 
lingers on, into seeming deep eternity. Often 
and often in the stilly night you hear it “ call- 
ing you, * ’ and you reach out to clasp and press 
to your heart a loving hand, and waking, find 
it only a passing dream. So our family circle 
was broken, and the old home was never the 
same again. 

In the corner of the garden, where the roses 
abound thickest, three tall silver poplars grow, 
and built beside them is a high brick fence, 


48 


W ABF ARES OF THE HEART 


formed square, enclosing a sacred spot where 
my little sister’s body rests. Ivy so covers the 
fence that you see no walls, for they all are 
olive green. Roses grmv about the entrance and 
intertwine and cling to the iron-rodded gate, 
and through the interstices of the flowers and 
the leaves you catch glimpses of the stone that 
bears the inscription, “My Little Sister.” 

Among the ivy leaves in the spring, the 
thrush and the wood sparrows make their nests. 
In the late summer in the- high branches of the 
silver poplars, the doves stop awhile to mourn 
for their little mate, and the robbins as they 
gather to migrate further south, stretch their 
throats in song as though to bid farewell to this 
sacred spot, and when the winter time comes 
and all except the ivy that’s beautiful in the 
rose garden is withered and seems dead, the 
wild wind mourns through the tops of the three 
silvered guardsmen, and they bow their heads 
in obeisance, as in their loneliness, they call for 
my little sister. 


DID HE ROCK THE BOAT 


T HE midday .sun grew warm and as our 
tramp had been a long one, in the inviting 
shade of an old elm tree we threw ourselves 
upon the ground and rested. A good fellow 
loves to talk. It’s characteristic of educated 
Southerners, most of them talk well and charm- 
ingly, and though in some instances they have 
been known to hang themselves by indulging 
too freely in thought’s expression, in others 
they prove engaging while dreamily you listen 
to some good story, as did I, to my tramping 
friend as we lay stretched upon the grass. 

“It was the summer of 1876 and I was on my 
vacation in Philadelphia at the ‘ Centennial 
Fair’ with as fine and joyous a lot of young 
Kentuckians as the old State ever knew. In 
their young manhood they were indeed proud 
scions of the ‘Bluegrass’ educated to the pur- 
ple, sensitive of honor and chivalrous to the 
ladies. 

“One day a letter came to me from a beauti- 
ful girl, the daughter of the most eminent sur- 
geon in the South, asking if I did not think my 

49 


50 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


summer’s outing would prove more profitable 
to health if spent at a wondrous resort in the 
Cumberland Mountains, where the fish begged 
you to take them, the air braced you, the women 
all needed dancing partners and the sunshine 
warmed your soul. 

* ‘ She was a woman of the Gods, divinely tall 
and most divinely fair.” Her eyes, her golden 
hair, her features all seemed perfect. She was 
indeed beautiful. In conversation she could 
hold you entranced. In little worries she 
could lend you her heart, even tears, were it 
needful. At times she was fascinating, sympa- 
thetic, and were you not guarded, she would 
play upon your heartstrings until you unbur- 
dened your soul. 

‘ 4 She was a flirt. She seemed to think it was 
her inherited due to punish the man sex, prob- 
ably from discourtesy to Eve, until they be- 
came her playthings, yet I know her heart was 
good, as has been proved, for today she is a lov- 
ing, happy and faithful wife, but as a young 
girl she conducted a refined slaughter house of 
her own and men were the victims. 

‘ ‘ Ever since Adam started the game, man 
has been topheavy when it comes to a beautiful 
woman who seems to manifest some interest in 


DID HE ROCK THE BOAT 


51 


him. History recounts so many instances that 
it were folly to enumerate even one of them, so 
like any other half or whole man to the moun- 
tains I had to go. For a few days it was a 
dream of Eden, beautiful girls at games about 
the lawns, strolls through the hills, fishing, 
boating upon the deep and swiftly flowing 
river, tennis matches, the gathering of wild 
flowers, doing the Virginia reel by day and 
waltzing by night on the piazzas in the moon- 
light. 

“Such dreams could not remain, and of ne- 
cessity must have abrupt awakenings, and mine 
ended in the usual manner. Another fellow 
came, he was a man of letters, the owner of a 
great newspaper, so I was thrown upon the 
brush pile. I pined in grief for many long and 
watchful hours. In my breast bitter resent- 
ment burned alive. My place had been taken 
by another, this lettered man, and it seemed to 
me he gloated at my misfortune. He was as I 
had been, ‘the man of the hour’ and, like ‘ Pa- 
tience on a monument, ’ I smiled, and thought 
unutterable things while suffering pangs, 
which like worms fed on my sunburned cheeks, 
and yet as did Casabianca I stayed on, al- 
though her voice was no longer heard. 


52 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


“But the pressure became unbearable and 
pictures of home began to gather as I figured 
on my wasted summer, and in desperation I en- 
gaged passage to leave this ‘Lost Paradise ’ on 
the four o’clock morning’s stage two days 
later. 

“On the afternoon of the day before I was to 
leave, as a panacea to my sore distress, and a 
decided ease to her own conscience, this beauti- 
ful girl consented to leave my hated rival for a 
few hours and take her last boating trip with 
me upon the river where we had spent so many 
happy days. It was not like any of the merry 
trips we had taken before, it was more a 
voyage of lamentation, and being soon over, 
on our return while I was endeavoring to make 
a landing in front of the hotel verandas where 
the river was deepest, with her arms filled with 
wild flowers that the mountains grow, the po- 
ems that Tennyson had sung, and the story of 
Owen Meredith’s Lucile, this ‘woman of the 
Gods’, her hair like skeins of gold kissed by 
sunbeams, rose from her seat in the end 
of the boat, and with a sigh of relief for pen- 
ance done, stepped forward and threw her 
weight upon its side, when it quickly careened 
and toppled both of us into the deep river. 


DID HE ROCK THE BOAT 


53 


“When she rose the first time I seized her by 
her beautiful hair and grappling we sank to- 
gether. How fast my mind worked at that mo- 
ment only he knows who is drowning. I remem- 
ber the sandy bottom of the river, how we 
played foot-ball upon it as we rolled, crawled, 
pulled and struggled, it seemed as though 
years for its nearby bank, and how still grap- 
pled, my feet touching and imbedded in the 
sand, we rose together to the surface, when 
God’s fresh air once more filled my lungs and 
with my little remaining strength, I placed the 
precious burden upon the river’s bank. 

“With a ‘Babel of voices’ and much excite- 
ment, the guests of the hotel crowded to the 
scene and lovingly and tenderly they carried 
my partner of the afternoon to her rooms, 
where in a short time, recovering, she became 
her sweet self again, and sent messages innu- 
merable asking that she might see me to ex- 
press her thanks and obligation for the service 
I had rendered and to wait another day before 
taking the morning’s early stage for home. 

Jokingly she has often since said, had I done 
so, and not been so stubbornly wicked, each 
might tell a different life’s story. In the mean- 
time the rescurer had not fared so well as the 


54 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


rescued. Like a broken reed he stood apart, all 
silent and alone with his dripping garments 
clinging like cerements to his quaking bones, 
until an old lady approached him and extend- 
ing her hand said, ‘he looked like he was wet 
and needed a stimulant. ’ 

“And then these dear, good old ladies 
brought him brandy from their summer’s stock 
and not lacking in courtesy and appreciation 
he took their offerings freely until the stars 
looked like moons and the weight of woe was 
lifted from his heart. 

‘ ‘ The stage ride in the early morning was in- 
deed a lonely one and finished my summer’s 
outing. The writer of this story relates it as 
it was told to him. Personally he knew this 
beautiful Kentucky girl. She is still living in 
the State she loves so well, and like ‘Cornelia, 
the mother of the Gracchi, boasts of three fine 
sons, all of whom are enlisted and serving in 
the navy of her country. As to my dear old 
tramping friend, he left me years ago, and 
locked in his breast he alone carried the secret, 
no one else will ever know. 

“Did he rock the boat or was it an acci- 
dent ? 9 9 


TWO BRAVE MEN— 


L IEUT. -GEN. Leonidas Polk was most demo- 
cratic in his character, dramatic in his 
manner, a wonderful orator and a Chesterfield 
in his deportment. When Episcopal Bishop of 
the State of Louisiana, he advised his people 
that on a certain Sunday he wished to deliver 
to them a special address in New Orleans with- 
out any intimation of its character or the pur- 
pose for which it was intended. In the course 
of his remarks, clothed in the vestments of his 
order, at the height of his wondrous flow of 
language, he exclaimed: “All my life I have 
served my God and preached to you and others 
the gospel of His Holy Son. I now leave my 
work to another and bid you farewell. I go to 
the war, as my duty calls me, to fight for what 
I believe is right and to serve both God and my 
country/ ’ and taking his clerical robe from 
about him, laid it upon his pulpit and left for 
the front. 


55 


56 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


A few months afterward he was made a 
Lieutenant-General, and shortly after this was 
killed in Georgia by a cannon shot. The trib- 
ute to duty had been paid, and the offering of 
himself to his country consummated. Lieut.- 
Gen. Leonidas Polk and President James K. 
Polk were first cousins and Gen. Lucius E. Polk 
was a nephew of the former. He was the first 
Confederate Brigadier after the war to be par- 
doned by Andrew Johnson, to swear allegiance 
to his country, to go back to work and endeavor 
to rehabilitate his fortunes. 

He had been a planter and his home was near 
Columbia, Tenn., in Maury county, a grant to 
his family in colonial times, through one of the 
Georges. On his return he could find nothing 
left but the overseer’s house and a few cabins 
in the negro quarter. Nothing daunted, a wife 
and children to provide for, with that Ameri- 
can spirit so characteristic of all brave people, 
he gathered some hundred or more negroes 
about him and began working and planting his 
grass-grown and neglected fields. 

I was then about fourteen years of age and it 
was my good fortune to be asked to come down 
to the old place, bring my gun with me and 


TWO BRAVE MEN 


57 


shoot quail, which were in great abundance, as 
they had not been disturbed to any extent dur- 
ing the war. Breech-loaders were an unknown 
quantity in those days and my hunting outfit 
was my dog, a double-barreled shot gun, with 
powder flask and shot pouch, old newspaper 
for wadding and percussion caps in my vest 
pocket. 

One beautiful moonlight night after supper, 
my uncle Lucius turned to me and said: 
“ Young man, I want that gun of yours. I have 
just gotten word that the Klu Klux are coming 
to my place tonight to whip one of my negroes, 
who has been misbehaving in the neighborhood, 
and I am determined that they shall not do so, 
as I am able to manage my own affairs without 
assistance .’ 9 

I brought him my gun; quietly he loaded 
both barrels with buckshot and started alone 
from the house. He was a man who seldom 
spoke unless questioned, commanding in fig- 
ure, black, piercing eyes. He limped slightly 
from a grapeshot wound, left him as a sad 
memento of a vain and fruitless struggle. Al- 
though he did not tell me, I knew where he was 
going and, overtaking him, I begged that I 


58 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


. might go with him. He looked at me for a 
while, seemed to hesitate, then put his hand on 
my shoulder and, turning away, said, “Come, 
my boy, if you care to.” About a mile away 
from the negro quarter, by the side of the wind- 
ing and narrow road leading to it, we stationed 
ourselves in the high weeds and awaited the 
coming of the “white-faced men on horse- 
back.” 

Hardly a word was spoken between us for an 
hour or more, occasionally a song from the 
negro quarter, the tinkling of a sheep bell in 
the distance or the light from the cabin window 
of some belated worker was the only lack of 
evidence of a world fast gone to sleep. And 
then, another hour passed and it seemed our 
vigil would prove vain, and then — I could hear 
them coming with the seemingly muffled tread 
of their horses, these silent riders of the night. 

They rode four abreast and looked as though 
an hundred. As they came near our hiding 
place, my uncle stepped from the weeds into 
the road and hurriedly said, as the cavalcade 
halted and ranged across it: “Wait a moment, 
gentlemen. I know your mission tonight and I 
beg you to turn back and leave me to manage 


TWO BKAVE MEN 


59 


my place and my people. Some of you are 
my neighbors; some my friends. All of you 
served, like myself, in our lost cause. You 
are actuated by what you consider a sense of 
duty and a preservation of order, but no help 
is needed here and you must leave me alone. 

“ I am positive in this matter, and I am as 
you know a man of few words, but I do assure 
you that if you insist upon coming further, it 
will be only across my dead body.” 

In whispers they conferred together, while 
the one man against an hundred stood alone in 
the road waiting for the verdict. In the moon- 
light they figured on a brave man’s life and 
then the leader rode from within the group 
and said to my uncle: “General, you are a 
brave man and your life is needed in this com- 
munity.” Then, joining his fellow riders, they 
turned about and “rode” through the remain- 
ing silent hours of the night. 


THE WORLD IS TRULY SMALL— 


W HEN my oldest son, Russell, was about 
two years old, my wife and I decided to 
spend the summer at Bersheba Springs, Tenn., 
in the heart of the Cumberland Mountains. My 
parents had been frequent guests at this cele- 
brated resort, in its early days, and we were 
anxious to see and visit it. 

The scenery in the Cumberland Mountains is 
most beautiful, especially in the late summer 
when the rhododendron is in bloom and the lau- 
rel is at its best. 

We were making the journey to the springs 
by coach, the transportation facilities in those 
days being poor and meager. 

Arriving at Mont Eagle, Tenn., about dusk, 
we made arrangements to spend the night. 
Shortly after dinner Russell was taken very ill. 
I made inquiries for a doctor and was told 
there were none in the place, and it looked as 


60 


THE WORLD IS TRULY SMALL 


61 


though we would lose our boy without anyone 
to help us. 

A native told me there was an old doctor who 
spent his summers farther up in the mountains, 
but he had always persistently declined to 
make sick calls in the neighborhood. I finally 
persauded the hotel man to go and see the old 
gentleman and tell him that a young couple 
from Louisville, Ky., with a very sick child 
was at the hotel, and implore him to come and 
render some medical aid. 

The doctor was persuaded to do so, and after 
an examination produced from his saddle bags 
an immense bottle of calomel, and poured on a 
piece of newspaper, which he tore from a table, 
what seemed to me a sufficient dose for the 
State of Tennessee. I said to him that we had 
never given our baby any medicine and I 
thought the dose too large. He was a crusty 
old fellow. He glared at me, and proceeded to 
pour the calomel back into the bottle and leave 
the room without prescribing for the sick child. 
I backed up against the door and told him that 
before he left the room he must prescribe for 
my baby or that he would never leave it alive. 
He laughed at my threat, but my wife’s plead- 


62 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


ings with the obstinate and refractory old gen- 
tleman, as we stood glaring at each other, fin- 
ally wilted him, and he gave the child a small 
dose of calomel, very mnch smaller than the 
original one. 

In the morning the little fellow was mnch 
better, the fever having been broken, and we 
were ready to resume our journey to the 
springs. 

The proprietor of the hotel came to me and 
said the doctor was in the office, and learning 
my name, wished to speak to me. I greeted 
him with a pleasant smile, told him that the 
baby was better, asked for my bill, and thanked 
him for his services. 

He looked at me for a moment and then 
shouted, ‘ i Young man, I wish you to under- 
stand that I am no horse doctor. If it had not 
been for me, you would not be living today. ’ ’ 

He stated that when I was a small child, liv- 
ing in Nasville, while suffering from scarlet 
fever and my doctors had given me up, he was 
called in. He had sat and slept by my bedside 
for thirteen days and nights, until I was out of 
danger. “And now, sir, do you think I know 
my business? I am Dr. , of the 


THE WORLD IS TRULY SMALL 


63 


United States of America, sir! And I want 
yon to know it ! ’ ’ 

I apologized deeply, thanked him humbly, the 
old fellow smiled, so we shook hands and 
parted. 

We passed his summer residence on our way 
to Bersheba, where he had selected a most beau- 
tiful spot. It was built on one of the highest 
peaks in the Cumberland range, and looking 
down you could see the blue mountain tops with 
only spaces of air between them and his charm- 
ing home. An inaccessible tangle of laurel and 
rhododendron clothed the rough and precipi- 
tous walls of his mountain palace. In all it was 
one of the most charming spots I have ever 
seen. 

As we drove along, I thanked God for the old 
doctor’s timely arrival at the hotel, that had 
saved the life of our first born, and mused what 
a very small world it was after all. 


A THRICE TOLD TALE 


I T had been a great summer at the i ‘Old 
White’ * and the “Season” was fast draw- 
ing to a close. Virginia and the South “had 
gathered there her beauty and chivalry, and 
bright the lamps shone by night over fair wo- 
men and brave men,” as they promenaded 
about the porches or danced in the ball room 
and the parlors. 

Throughout the day could be heard the joy- 
ous laughter of sweet girls in their teens and 
young men in their twenties. Music with its 
wondrous swell arose at intervals from the 
parlors, when with piano accompaniment some 
trained voice, touched with divinest power, lent 
its sweetness to the mountain air. 

Picnics and tennis matches “raged” upon 
the lawn, and raged on, only stopping for the 
moment to watch some passing cavalcade of 
riders bound for an hour’s jaunt in the moun- 
tains, as a tonic for the evening’s ball. 

The “Tennis Match” was over and the Wes- 
terner had lost. Without comment, as much 


64 


A THRICE TOLD TALE 


65 


from intention as habit, quietly the little gath- 
ering took the path that led to the place where 
mint, sugar and bourbon smelled most enticing, 
and the pounding of ice led to suggestive com- 
bination. 

“Well, my friends,” said the loser, “the war 
of the roses is about over, and tonight at our 
meeting we must decide the ‘Belledon!’ of White 
Sulphur for the year, between two beautiful and 
charming women. I shall use what influence I 
may have with you for natural and not artific- 
ial beauty. The coloring on the cheeks of the 
lady from my western country was born there, 
on yours from the South it is paid for.” 

A young Virginian resented like a flash the 
charge, and a wager was made to be decided by 
the group as this Southern belle that night 
should enter the ball room on the arm of her 
escort. At the appointed hour, in her regal and 
glorious beauty, this Virginia girl, the lights 
shining fully upon her face, approached the 
ball room door, with her judges ranged about 
it, and bowed graciously to them all, as her ac- 
cuser, forgetting himself for the moment, in in- 
tensest interest exclaimed, 

“Painted, by God!” 


66 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


She, with the loveliness that enshrined her 
and the grace that became her, hearing, 
stopped, bowed in acknowledgment and said, 
‘ ‘ Thank yon, sir ; painted by God is right, sir , 9 9 
and passing on joined the dancers. 

Just so quickly, he who had misjudged her, 
noting the loveliness of her complexion, the 
truthfulness in her eyes, turned to the group, 
and said in anger and disappointment, 

* ‘Gentlemen, the matter is closed, no expres- 
sion is needed from you. I lose the bet,” and 
drawing from his pocket the wager of the 
morning, dashed it into the face of his South- 
ern friend who had defended her. There was 
no parade about it. It was to be done so quietly 
that only the selected few would know. No 
apology could be made, a deadly insult had 
been inflicted and the offense was without par- 
don. They were to meet at sunrise at the foot 
of the mountain, on the edge of the little valley 
below historic “Lover’s Leap.” 

It was to be fought to a finish or as long as 
both contestants were upon their feet. At the 
first discharge of their weapons this fine young 
fellow from thte West fell badly wounded and 
we hurried him to a farm house close by, where 









■y- 



The President’s House 
Overlooking valley where duel was fought 





68 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


we cared for him, and on the night’s train took 
him to a hospital in Washington, where he re- 
mained for months before recovering. 

The whole affair was closely kept for several 
years and only those who had witnessed the 
duel knew that he had not been injured in a 
runaway accident, as was supposed. There was 
no chosen belle that year at the “Old White” 
and the laurels were divided among many 
beautiful women. After all, probably it was 
the happiest solution to a disputed question. 

Many years after I met this same Western 
gentleman, whom I had known as a young col- 
lege man at the University of Virginia. He 
was one of the Supreme Judges of his State, a 
man of charm and versatility. Naturally our 
thoughts and conversation reverted to that ear- 
lier summer of our lives in the Virginia Moun- 
tains, and I recall so well his saying : 

“After a long practice at the bar, and pre- 
siding as a judge upon the bench, and many 
other individual experiences through life, and 
among them the one at the ‘ Old White , 9 I have 
lived to believe that the word of a good woman 
is more to be depended upon than that of the 
opposite sex. 


I AM IN MOURNING TODAY FOR AN 
OLD FRIEND I KNOW 

1 KNOW our friendship began when we were 
boys. One day the “ bully of the school” 
pulled a young girl’s hair and my boy friend 
slapped him in the face and knocked him down. 
The teacher saw it, and cruelly he “ strapped” 
my friend, but the boy never whimpered nor 
did he shed a tear. 

That country grammar school was made up 
of a fine set of girls and boys; even the bully 
was a good fellow, in his way. He just loved to 
worry somebody and used to say that he 
couldn’t help it. He would hit you in the back 
of the head when you were not looking with a 
spit ball and then swear he “ hadn’t throwed 
it.” 

He could “set a pin” in the bottom of your 
chair so it would catch you in the right place 
every time, and could “shoot shot” between 
his fingers across the school room with deadly 
precision. The house dog ran for the barn 


69 


70 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


when he saw him coming and the cat for the 
woodpile when the front gate banged. Yet at 
lunch time he would divide his apple with you, 
and when a watermelon patch was raided he 
took the smallest melon always. 

Every time the teacher struck my friend with 
that leather strap, for he was “hitting hard,” 
the blood in the veins of “us boys” ran hot, and 
then hotter, and after it had reached a superla- 
tive stage, with common impulse, in a body, we 
rushed that teacher, and what we did to him 
“was a plenty.” In the melee my head was 
badly cut, for the teacher “got me” in the on- 
rush with a chair. It was here my friend was 
made, and my life’s friendship began. 

With his pocket handkerchief he bound my 
bleeding and aching head, and being larger and 
much stronger than I, carried me tenderly as 
he would have done a woman, to my home. 
After that we used to hunt together, own our 
dogs together. On the commons we played ball 
together ; he was the pitcher, and I the catcher. 
At college we were on the same team, and it 
seemed fated, happily fated, that as a pair we 
worked in most things, even in our classes, well 
together. 


I AM IN MOURNING FOR AN OLD FRIEND 71 


There was no rivalry between ns, no jeal- 
ousies of any kind. I felt him superior to my- 
self, and I looked up to him. He was my pal, 
my trusted pal, and I loved him as I would my 
dearest brother. I honored him and I believed 
in him. Damon could have been no closer to 
Pythias than I was to him. 

In the vacation seasons he visited me at my 
father’s country place, and in return I would 
go to Lexington, Ky., where the family, his sis- 
. ters and brothers, made the “ welkin ring” and 
the halls of his old homestead reverberated with 
laughter and joyousness at our home-coming. 
Then a good woman came along, two good wo- 
men, and we both were happily married. 

We four traveled the world together and our 
wives were friends and harmonized. Many 
year have passed since then, and many changes 
have come with them, children and grandchild- 
ren dominate the ancestral halls of the old 
homestead at Lexington, and the commanding 
voice of my cherished and dearest friend is no 
longer heard, for only yesterday I received a 
telegram saying that he had “left me,” and 
this is why “I am in mourning today for an old 
friend I know.” 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 

H E WAS one of the “bunch.” We all liked 
him. He was as full of devilment as he 
was of sterling qualities. Life was a laugh to 
him. He would shed his clothes for you, if you 
were his pal, and smile while he shivered. 

If there was any fun in you his pranks 
brought it out. He was a born clown and at 
our boys’ circus he was the “whole show.” He 
could “skin the cat” on the horizontal bar until 
you grew dizzy watching him, and turn a som- 
ersault in the air from a standing start. 

The old family carriage mare he could ride 
bareback, and the tricks he could do, when her 
broad back was padded, as she cantered around 
the ring, would have astounded Barnum. At 
marble time he and I always were partners. 
Why he selected me over the others I never 
knew, probably because I was good natured 
like himself and bragged about his being my 
partner. 


72 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


73 


At “Cincinnati” five times out of six he 
would “plump the head man from taw” and 
then “skin the ring.” At “Boston” from any 
side of the round ring he would “hit his man” 
and then “clean up.” At the end of “top 
time” it took a wheelbarraw to carry his tops 
to the ash pile, for he owned all in the “bunch” 
and those he could not give away were either 
relegated to that burial pile of alluvium and 
waste, or sought the gutters of the alley. 

With a gum shooter he could hit a pigeon 
with a buckshot on the roof of the neighbor- 
hood church, or break a gas lamp half a block 
away. With a sling a hundred yards or more 
he was more deadly than David, and Goliath 
“wouldn’t have been in it” with him, had he 
lived in those days, and they had ever “come 
together” in a rock fight. 

He would have “knocked his block off” in- 
stead of plugging him between the eyes. He 
was always our Captain, when every year, we 
fought the tough Capital Hill crowd with every- 
thing but guns, and when he would * ‘ swing his 
sling” we’d stop fighting to see what he’d hit. 

One day at the Public School the teacher left 
the room and made him Monitor over “the 


74 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


bunch” and on his slate told him to write the 
names of those who misbehaved in his absence. 
I presumed too far upon our friendship and my 
friend’s sense of honor, and danced a jig in the 
middle of the floor for the delectation of the 
others. He reported me ; the teacher strapped 
me, and then of course there had to be a fight 
although we had been the best of freinds. It 
was to have been after school, but it happened 
before the appointed hour. 

Our school room was on the third floor and 
we met at the top of the stairway, he coming up, 
I going down, and like two wild animals we 
leaped for each other, and clinched, rolled to the 
bottom of the stairs, pommelling and fighting 
as we went down. In the fight I got a couple of 
bronzed and blackened eyes, a variety of knots 
and bumps and he lost half a head of hair. All 
that saved me from further punishment in the 
course of the downward journey, was the 
prompt arrival of the teacher with the boys be- 
hind him. They thought the roof of the old 
building was 4 4 coming in.” 

When the mistake was*discovered, in spite of 
my bruises I got another licking. I always 
thought that teacher didn’t like me. After that, 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


75 


the feud was patched up and Robert Randall 
and I became better friends than ever before. 

Soon school days were over and we were sent 
to college, I to Virginia, he to Yale, and when 
vacation time came we did not see as much of 
each other as we had done when boys. It had 
become the fashion to go away in the hot sum- 
mer months, to* close our Nashville city homes, 
to leave them in the keeping and the care of 
servants, and every one who could went away to 
the country, the mountains or the seashore. 

Each year that Randall came back I noted 
changes in him. He became more dignified, 
more indisposed to talk, and he began to lose 
his taste for outdoor sports. He however was 
fond of hunting and he kept a fine kennel of 
pointer and setter dogs. He dressed in the lat- 
est fashions and his clothes were made by the 
best tailors in New York. Of course he was rich, 
tall and of gentlemanly bearing, handsome and 
polished in manners. There was one weakness, 
if you care to call it such, that dominated his 
life. Every pretty face he saw he raved over. 
Every beautiful woman he met he fell in love 
with. Every home in Nashville was thrown 


76 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


open to him and most mothers considered him a 
great catch for their eligible daughters. 

Three years after leaving Yale, Randall's 
father died in a few hours, from the bursting of 
a blood vessel. He was known to be both cho- 
leric and irascible, and had few friends. He 
considered himself better than his neighbors, 
and was seldom seen outside the beautiful gar- 
dens of his home, in which he greatly prided 
himself. Some months after her husband's 
death Randall 's mother died, and he became the 
sole heir to their large estates, as he was the 
only child. 

Randall became known as an aristocrat. He 
prided himself on his family, his lineage, and in 
his four years from home, he had altogether lost 
that democratic spirit that had so characterized 
his boyhood. He began to live more to himself, 
grew more and more reserved, and gave up 
many of his old friends. He stopped going into 
society as he had been so accustomed to do, 
became almost a recluse. He seemed to be al- 
ways out when you called. In fact, he saw no 
one other than myself. For me he seemed to 
retain his old affection. He would absent him- 
self from his old home for weeks at a time and 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


77 


on his return would tell no one where he had 
been. 

It grieved me deeply to see this, for I had an 
affection, a strong affection for this man. I 
could not understand his long and frequent ab- 
scences. We had undergone as boys many trials 
together. We had fought together, fought for 
one another and fought each other, and I knew 
him in his friendship for me to be as true as 
steel, and as far as my knowledge went adamant 
in the higher virtues and obligations of life. 
Even when we were boys, among us all it was 
said, that if Bob Randall ever gave you his 
word, he was never known to break it. 

Ostensibly, or as far as I, or any of his 
friends knew, he lived in his father’s home, to 
which he had fallen heir. It had been in 
his family for several generations. It was a 
grand old place, surrounded by a high brick 
fence. In the middle of the grounds stood the 
house, with a wonderful and well kept flower 
garden almost encircling it. Fountains played 
from the midst of the rose bushes, and rustic 
benches lined the walks. It was a beautiful rest 
spot, an ornament to a city; but there seemed 


78 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


no one there to enjoy it other than the humming 
birds and the gold fish. 

Randall’s father was artistic in his taste, and 
paintings from Bougereau and the more modern 
masters hung upon the walls of his gallery. The 
whole house was furnished lavishly, and in the 
best of taste. An old colored mammy looked 
after her young master’s wants. I think she 
had nursed him when a baby. A butler, long in 
his father’s service, was the chief custodian of 
the place and its valuable possessions. I some- 
times thought he could account for the change 
that had come to my friend. Yet, if there was 
a skeleton living in Randall’s heart, while he 
might know it, the threat of death could not 
make him divulge it. 

#####*## 

One night as we sat smoking in the library, 
the door bell rang and the butler answering it 
came hurrying back with a large beautiful and 
unopened basket. He found it, as he “Said, on 
the pavement below the doorstep. Randall with 
a smile, lifted up the top, and in a moment his 
face turned pale as death. I did not under- 
stand then, I do now. He had recognized his 
own child. 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


79 


Pinned to the embroidered coverlet was a 
note, which hastily reading, impulsively he 
passed to me, and as I read its contents I 
thought of the wail of the Banshee foretelling 
the death of some loved and dear one. 

‘ ‘ I send you our child and I bid you 
a long farewell. May God forgive me, 
as I have forgiven you. You will find 
my body at the foot of the Old Ferry 
Landing. Lovingly, Louise. ’ ’ 

Randall grabbed his hat as he passed the hall 
rack without further noticing the beautiful baby 
child and I followed. It seemed we ran all the 
way to the river, to the place described, and as 
we neared it, a policeman came running towards 
us, exclaiming that a woman had just drowned 
herself by jumping into the river from the Old 
Ferry Landing. Like a madman Randall seized 
him by the throat, and as he exclaimed: “My 
God, why did you not stop her ! ’ ’ he struck him 
in the face, and he fell as though he had been hit 
by a catapult. 

The next morning we found the body. With- 
out a word of explanation on his part, without 
a word of inquiry on mine, jointly we looked 
after and attended to all the obsequies, and the 


80 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


body was interred in the family lot of the Ran- 
dalls. Some day, I knew he would tell me all. 
I would have died before I would have asked 
him to do so, without his volunteering it. 

The papers scarcely commented upon the 
suicide — they seldom do — and our identity was 
only known to the few whose help we needed. 
Randall after this seemed bowed in deepest sor- 
row; nothing could arouse him. He took in- 
terest in no one. The beautiful baby girl he 
provided with the best of nurses, and named 
her Louise Randall. He seemed fond of her, 
and she was the only thing in life, with her 
dimpled cheeks and her big brown eyes, that 
could bring a smile to his haggard face. 
######*##### 

Years passed, and with them came changes, 
many changes. Randall had become a perfect 
recluse. He seemed to live solely for Louise. 
He wanted no other society. However, to a 
degree we kept up our friendship. I saw him 
at intervals. When I remained away too long 
he would send for me. I felt as if he had some- 
thing he wanted to tell me, but for some reason 
would not. Louise was growing into a beautiful 
woman and had just returned from a Philadel- 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


81 


phia school for her vacation. In another year 
she would graduate and then we three were 
going for a trip around the world. 

Often at night in the early days of June, 
before it became too hot to go to Randall's 
summer home in the Cumberland Moutains, 
while we sat upon the porch overlooking the 
beautiful flower garden, with its fountains 
“playing to the moonlight," Louise would sing 
to us, and it seemed as though Heaven had 
opened ; that the angels had folded their wings 
and were standing still, that they might listen 
to her voice, and send back in chorus its sweet 

refrain. 

/■ 

One night as she sang “My forsaken Moth- 
er" for the first time, the music of which was 
well adapted to her beautiful voice, I saw Ran- 
dall's head drop upon his breast. Louise and 
I both rushed to him in alarm, and it was some 
time before we could arouse him, and then he 
awoke as from a deep dream and his faculties 
were stunned and seemed dead. 

I thought I saw a longing and wondering look 
in Louise's eyes, that sank deep into my heart. 
Could she have guessed anything? Could she 
have heard anything from gossip mongers in 



Louise 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


83 


all these years? She knew that she was called 
Randall’s adopted daughter and she asked no 
questions. 

When vacation was over Louise went to Phil- 
adelphia to complete her last year’s schooling, 
and after she had gone, to both Randall and 
myself, the old home lost its charm. The fall 
came rapidly, the leaves fell from the trees, 
the flowers in the garden were wilted and dead, 
and the melancholy days “The saddest of the 
year” were at hand. Christmas, however, 
would soon come, and Louise was to return for 
the holidays. So we looked forward to her 
home-coming, like a starving man does for food, 
a thirsty one for water. We had planned to 
spend our Christmas holidays at the summer 
home in the mountains, and Randall wished 
first to go to open up the house and make all 
needed arrangements, as it was generally closed 
during the winter months. 

How “man proposes and God disposes!” Is 
it fated and are the plans for our going and 
coming prearranged? As we chatted and 
watched the flames shoot up the chimney from 
the great log fire, someone knocked at the door. 
It was one of the men about the place, and he 


84 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


told us that close by the house some wild tur- 
keys were in the habit of roosting in the trees 
every night, and if we cared to go in the early 
morning he would show us the place. 

There was nothing else to do. Fortunately, 
we did not have far to go. Or, was the setting 
already fixed and it mattered not? So, long be- 
fore daylight, we went to the roost with our 
guide and secreting ourselves as best we could, 
waited for the coming of the gray dawn and 
the passing of the night. 

Just before the break of day, to improve his 
position and get a little closer to the trees 
where we knew the turkeys were roosting, Ran- 
dall reached for his loaded gun, lying upon the 
ground by his side, and catching it by the muz- 
zle, foolinsKly drew it towards him, when the 
hammer of one of the barrels caught some ob- 
struction near the ground discharging the 
gun, its full load of shot taking effect in Ran- 
dall ’s left arm, tearing the flesh horribly be- 
tween the elbow and the shoulder. 

We hurried him rapidly to the house, staying 
the blood as best we could until a country doc- 
tor, who lived close by Randall’s home, came 
to our assistance. From the station I tele- 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


85 


graphed to Nashville for other doctors and 
nurses, who on a special train arrived late 
that afternoon. 

At that time Randall seemed quite cheerful. 
He did not think of himself. He only feared 
it might interfere with Louise’s Christmas in 
the mountains, that we all had so looked for- 
ward to and planned for. Later in the night 
he became much worse. A high fever seized 
him and at times he was delirious. The 
doctors seemed much worried and never left 
him for a moment. It seemed they feared blood 
poisoning, as the wound at first had not been 
properly treated and cared for. 

The third day Randall grew much worse and 
suffered from terrible exhaustion, and in great 
alarm I wired for Louise to come. In his de- 
lirium he constantly asked for Louise. His 
sane moments were further apart. 

On the morning of the fourth day he recog- 
nized me and with difficulty he turned from his 
wounded shoulder and reaching out with his 
good hand, he seized mine. 

“Old friend!” he said, “we were partners 
when we were boys, we are partners now, and 
I know we will be partners hereafter. We have 


86 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


always trusted each other, and I do not believe 
a lie has ever passed between us. I believe in 
you with all the vigor of my soul, with all the 
love that’s in my heart, and I want to ask you 
a question. I know you will tell me the truth — 
Am I going to die? If I am, there is something 
I have kept from you all these years I must tell 
you. If I am not, I will tell you when I get 
well, for I must tell you, I must tell you — I can 
keep it no longer . 9 ’ 

Blood poisoning in deadly form had indicated 
itself, and the doctors had already told me that 
he could not live ; yet I could not tell him that 
he had to die. I had hoped before in my life, 
almost against hope, and won out. I knew how 
fallible the doctors were. They did not know 
his rugged nature as I did, his determination, 
his set purpose. Death in itself had no terrors 
to him. It has to few of us, when its heavy 
breath begins to touch us. No deathbed repent- 
ance was needed. If Randall had made mis- 
takes, he was human and his life was his vindi- 
cation, and God is merciful, broad, liberal and 
divine. 

I knew how he wanted to live. I knew how 
Louise needed him, how she worshiped him, how 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


87 


he was the light that guided her and how her 
very life he seemed. Again I knew how impres- 
sionable he was, how he believed in me. If I told 
him he had to die he would abandon the strug- 
gle to live, I wished him to maintain. If I told 
him the truth, he would unburden his soul's 
secret fo me — and in doing so I dreaded that he 
might tell me that Louise was born defamed — 
and then again I longed to have him set her 
aright in the eyes of the world, and tell me that 
she was his child born in lawful wedlock. The 
secret would live or die with him. He was the 
only one who knew. The chance of saving a 
man ’s life, against the fact of knowing whether 
a woman was born legally or defamed. Loving 
both, what should I do? — What should I do? 

Like lightning, the thought flashed through 
my mind, should he defame Louise, who would 
shield her when he was dead; to whom could 
she turn. Who would defend her against a 
fault for which she was not to blame, a curse 
the damning world would put upon her? 

And in my heart I answered the question; I 
realized that I loved her. I had not dared con- 
fess it to myself. I knew my life, my honored 
name was hers, now and always, should she 


88 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


care to have it, to the death should she need it ; 
and then, and then, Hell whispered in my ear : 
“Tell him the truth; you know her mother’s 
tragic end; it’s your only chance, your oppor- 
tunity if you love her. Let him know he has 
to die ; let him defame her ; you can shield her 
with your name and deep devotion. What 
chance have you to win her with your years? 
She has youth and beauty; from you old age 
is only a few steps removed/ ’ 

And then just so quickly my “Better Self” 
came to the rescue and pushed this selfish, im- 
passioned thought of Hell aside and again I 
wanted Randall, my life-long friend, the father 
of the woman I loved, to live; to tell me that 
she was his child not defamed, but his child 
born in lawful wedlock. 

For some time he held my hand gently, and 
then his grip grew tighter and his eyes blazed 
into mine and he asked again : i 6 Did you hear 
me, why don’t you answer! Am I going to die?” 
And 1 lied to him and he believed me. 

He threw his head back upon the pillow and 
fell asleep, and that night my old, my high- 
born, my cherished friend “left me” — “left 
me” with faith in his heart that I had never 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


89 


lied to him, “left me” with his burdened soul. 
But God knows his “human to err, divine to 
forgive.” What else is needed? Isn’t that 
enough? “Let him who is without sin be the 
first to cast a stone. 

About three weeks after Randall’s death 
Louise sent for me to come to the house. In 
going through his papers we found in his safe, 
in a sealed apartment, seemingly made for the 
purpose, a large envelope, and in it three 
small envelopes, all addressed to Louise. In 
the first and top one was this paper in Ran- 
dall’s handwriting, which read as follows: 

‘ ‘ My dear Child : I have done wrong. I 
ask no favors, no mercy of anyone except 
yourself, no mercy unless you see fit to for- 
give the sin I have committed against your 
mother and yourself. 

‘ ‘ My effort to do all within my power, all 
that I could, to give you every joy and com- 
fort that life affords, and all the affection 
that a father’s heart can bear for his be- 
loved and unfairly treated child, may to 
some extent condone the obloquy that I 
have put upon you. 


90 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


If yon cannot forgive me when first you 
read this confession of my soul, think and 
think again, look deep into your heart and 
remember that I am your own blood, your 
own father; that I am a Randall, that 
Christ forgave even those who had con- 
demned and harmed him, and in His last 
moments prayed — “ Father, forgive them, 
they know not what they do.” 

“One night when returning home while 
flushed with wine I met your mother. She 
was on her way from church. She was 
beautiful with her “Madonna-like face” 
and was a nurse girl for the children of a 
neighbor. I knew her family by reputa- 
tion. She was good and poor, I was rich 
and proud. But she had a wondrous face 
and I felt sure I loved her. I had told her 
so before. So meeting her this night, I 
begged her to marry me, and while reluc- 
tant, still she consented and together we 
procured a license and that night we were 
married. 

“The next day I went to my father, 
proud old aristocrat that he was, and told 
him what I had done. In uncontrolled 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


91 


anger he burst a blood-vessel and before 
dying appealed to me as the last of the 
Randalls, as his only son, to swear to 
him, that while I lived I would never tell 
what I had done, never bring my wife to 
the old home, and never publicly or pri- 
vately acknowledge my marriage to a 
domestic and the servant of a neighbor. 

“His dominant nature bore upon me, 
and with the feeling that I was responsible 
for his death, I swore by the honor of the 
Randalls that I would keep my marriage 
unknown to the world while I lived. He 
was satisfied, and with his dying lips he 
thanked me. 

“I immediately established a separate 
home and there quietly lived with my wife, 
occasionally coming to the old place to see 
my mother, who never guessed why my ab- 
sences were so protracted and close to- 
gether. In the meantime you were born 
and then my mother died, and I began to 
spend more time alone and to go more fre- 
quently to the old homestead. 

“I began to neglect your mother, to feel 
that our marriage had been a mistake. The 


92 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


thought that I had killed my father, whom 
I dearly loved, by marrying, preyed upon 
my mind, so I became antagonistic to the 
mother of my own child. Some influence, 
unknown, unseen, was dominating me. 
Your mother would often beg me to pub- 
lish to the world, not for her sake, but for 
yours, the fact of our lawful marriage, but 
‘ ‘ Conscience doth make cowards of us all, ’ ’ 
so I would promise and then not do it. 
Each time I arranged to announce it, my 
father’s ghost seemed to rise up before me 
and I could hear his dying words — ‘Re- 
member you are a Randall and they keep 
their oaths. 

“If I had not been a Randall I would 
have been less of a moral coward, and 
would have defied my father for the woman 
I had made my wife, and my life might 
have been a different and a happier one. 
But I was a Randall. I could not get away 
from that fact, and it was false honor that 
bound me to discredit your mother and my 
child. 

“Finally things grew worse and we be- 
came very unhappy. Your mother threat- 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


93 


ened to take her life. God knows I did not 
believe she would do so, but she kept her 
word, and one dark night, after she had left 
you, our child, upon the doorstep of the 
homestead, she sought the river and it 
swallowed her up. 

“You have been called my unlawful 
daughter, but you are my lawful, legal 
child, the offspring of a mistaken marriage, 
made in love, honorable in the sight of God. 
That it was not a happy one was my own 
fault and I have paid the penalty. The 
price has been everything that’s dear in 
life, with the exception of your love, and I 
leave you, believing that despite all, you 
will not take that from me. 

“Again, I ask you to forgive, and not 
forget me, and from my heart I beg you, 
when you read this confession, to bear in 
mind that it comes from a man over- 
whelmed with sorrow, whose only comfort 
is in the thought of your forgiveness and 
that even though his “sins be as scarlet, 
they may be washed as white as snow. ’ ’ 

In the second envelope we found the license 
showing Randall’s marriage to Louise’s moth- 


94 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


er, and in the last his will, making his daughter 
the sole heir to his estate. 

The kaleidoscopic changes that come to us 
are numerous and far-reaching. They apply 
to localities, mental states, the loves and sor- 
rows of the human heart, and often only cover 
short spaces of time. The locality in which we 
were born and was our home yesterday, today 
seems a dream of long ago. 

Like birds, in many respects, we build our 
nests, move and migrate, go and return. If 
their wings will bear them, they come back; it 
is their habit, they were taught to do so ; or are 
they more constant in their local affections than 
ourselves? Unlike them, sometimes we never 
care to return, because of some sad memory or 
changed condition. In shorter moments the 
thought you deemed established and considered 
immutable passes, and is succeeded by another 
altogether at variance. 

New friends take the place of the old, and 
while today the heart strings may seem strained 
and broken, tomorrow the tension will have 
gone and with the dawn of another day, we are 
like one born again, living in changed localities, 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


95 


having different thoughts and loving different 
people. Such is the common story of human 
life. 

So, in a little while, Louise wanted to close 
up the old home, to travel, to leave Nashville, 
but I feared should she do so, she might never 
return. Her friends were few — in fact she had 
none in her father’s home, as since her baby- 
hood she had been the gossip of the place and 
without her knowledge, had been avoided. On 
her vacations her time had always been taken 
up by her father and by myself. She seemed 
always happiest when with us, and cared little 
for the society of others. 

I did not want her to leave home, first for 
herself, as I wanted her to meet the people who 
so long had been discussing her, to have them 
see her in her charm and beauty, to know her 
as Randall’s lawful daughter, and then again 
I did not want her to go because I loved her, 
and I could not bear the thought of her going 
away. Under Randall’s will I had been made 
her trustee and adviser, and as the estate was 
a large one I had to see her often to ascertain 
her views on matters concerning the various 


96 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


investments that were necessary to make. So 
she deferred her going, and about a year after 
this conclusion, through the persuasions of a 
dear old aunt of Randall’s who had come to live 
with her since his death, and the earnest plead- 
ings of myself, she began to go out to small 
functions and in that way met many charming 
young people. 

Several months after this Louise made her 
formal debut in society and in a short time be- 
came the most admired and popular young 
woman in Nashville. She was beautiful, fasci- 
nating, educated, rich and sensible, considerate 
of the old, and lovely to the young. Everybody 
loved her. Even the shop girls in the stores 
dropped their other customers to wait on her. 
She was unselfish and Heaven’s smile lived 
upon her face and advertised her soul. For her 
years she was older in her views and tastes than 
most of her young friends. In knowledge and 
general information she far surpassed them, as 
her life outside of her school days had been 
spent mostly with those older than herself. 

The summer after her debut she went to 
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and 
was chosen the season’s Belle from among the 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


97 


many beautiful women of the South gathered 
there. The following winter in New Orleans 
she was made Queen of the wonderful ball 
given by the Mystic Crewe, considered the 
greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a 
charming and beautiful woman. All the social 
successes ; all the admiration ; all the love that 
came to her, she seemed unconscious of, and in 
no way did it change her nature or affect the 
in-dwelling goodness and purity of her heart. 

Of course she had not only admirers, but lov- 
ers, and many of them. Among the most press- 
ing in his suit, although Louise never spoke of 
him to me, was Will Carlton, a handsome, 
debonair, affable and courteous scion of one of 
Nashville’s best families. 

He stood high in his profession, was a lawyer, 
and had recently made much character for him- 
self in the conduct of a conspicuous suit that 
had run the gamut of the courts, which he had 
won although opposed by the ablest lawyers in 
the State. 

Shortly after meeting Carlton, she seemed 
changed in her manner to me; while she was 
kind and considerate, she was not the same as 
she had been. She grew more reserved and dis~ 


98 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


tant. I could not understand it. I would keep 
awake at night thinking of it. Although I 
needed the fees allowed me by the State in the 
management of her affairs, as I was poor, at 
times I thought I would resign, because of the 
change in Louise, which sank deep into my 
heart. 

One day I met Carlton on the street, and after 
stopping me, gentleman and cavalier that he 
was, he said : “I am so glad to meet you today, 
I want to tell you that I love Miss Louise and 
I am going to ask her to be my wife. I trust 
you will not oppose me.” I told him that 1 
would not. What else could I do? I saw no 
fault in him, although I knew no one was good 
enough for the girl and woman I had loved so 
dearly all these years. 

Of course I could understand why Carlton 
should love Louise, and shortly after our inter- 
view he became a most persistent wooer. He 
was gifted with a flow of language and in addi- 
tion to his good looks he possessed qualities 
and instincts that in a man attract a woman. 
But how little we know of a woman’s heart. In 
mute reasoning, seemingly, it questions, de- 
cides, determines, works alone, and when it 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


99 


knows itself, all assaults against it fail; all 
threats are without avail, and only cruelty, time 
and death can change it, and often they weaken 
at its throne. 

Some weeks after my meeting with Carlton 
matters of grave importance called me abroad 
and to consummate them required my absence 
for several months. Before going I had made 
up my mind to have a talk with Louise about 
Carlton. They appeared constantly together 
and it was the talk of the city that they were 
engaged and would shortly be married ; and yet 
to me she had never mentioned his name. 

I was deeply hurt and had determined to 
know the truth from her own lips; so one 
afternoon when word came that she wished to 
see me on a matter of vital importance, I 
dressed myself rapidly and hurried to the old 
homestead, thinking that at last she was going 
to tell me everything, and even though it would 
be hard to bear, still I wanted to know, and I 
felt that I ought to know before going away. 

It was an afternoon in Indian Summer. How 
well I recall it ! In answer to my ring, the old 
butler opened the door and on the hall table I 
placed my hat, and in the library, where we had 


100 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


so often sat and whiled and read away the 
hours from childhood to womanhood, I waited 
for her coming. 

The rays of the setting sun looked through 
the separated tapestried hangings and the lace 
curtains of the half opened windows, and as is 
always so at this beautiful season, quiet per- 
vaded the very air, and all nature seemed in 
slumber and resting after its efforts to keep 
beautiful the glorious summer that had been so 
short and seemingly had slept itself away. 

I could hear the rustle of her silk dress as she 
came down the stairs, and when she reached the 
door she stood there like one in a dream, a vis- 
ion of loveliness. I rose to greet her and of- 
fered her my chair; as I did so I noticed that 
she seemed very nervous. In a little while she 
became more like herself, and after passing the 
commonplaces of the day, with that haste that 
always characterized me in matters where I 
should have been less precipitate, I asked her 
why she had not let me know of her engagement 
to Carlton, that it was the talk of Nashville, and 
that I seemed to be the only one who had not 
been told, and that based upon my regard and 
our life’s friendship, I felt I had not been 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


101 


treated fairly. Without a word of reply, she 
rose from her chair, held out her hand, which 
mechanically I took, and in seeming anger bade 
me goodbye, then left me standing, like one 
dazed, stunned and in a dream. I could hear 
her as she ascended the winding stairway. Each 
step she took was a step upon my heart, and the 
light of the world seemed gone out to me for- 
ever. 

As I passed the hall table on my way out, 
where I had left my hat, lying by the side of it 
was an old book I well remembered, its leaves 
all torn and crumpled — “ Tales of Childhood.” 

I wondered why I had not noticed it before. 
I felt sure it was not there when I came in, yet 
it might have been. How often Louise and I 
had read it together when she was a child. I 
could see her great brown eyes, as to every 
word I read she listened in wonderment. I could 
feel her tiny hand as I held it in the broad palm 
of my own. Mechanically I reached for the book 
and turning its crumpled leaves, between them 
I found this note, addressed to me. Like one 
dazed, in wonderment I read : 

“Don’t you know that you love me? 
Don’t you know that I love you? Why are 
you so dull? Have I not known loijg ago 


102 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


of the white lie you told my father, hoping 
thereby to save his life; of your lifetime 
devotion; the sense of duty to him that 
prompted you to lie, it mattered not what 
the sacrifice might have been to yourself? 

But it is not for these things that I love 
you. lit is because I have always loved you. 

Must I ask you to take me as your wife? 
Must I show you again and again that I am 
yours with all the trust that’s in my soul, 
with all the love that’s in my heart? 
Louise.” 

Fate’s wheel again had turned and at last I 
had found both peace and joy; that sweet peace 
that brings happiness to the home, where a 
good wife presides ; for there love abides ; that 
joy, that brings Heaven to earth and makes our 
sojourn here complete. 

Before leaving for Europe Louise and I were 
quietly married, and upon our arrival, finding 
that my business would detain me longer than 
expected, we leased for the winter a most won- 
derful old place at Toulon, in the southern part 
of France, near the beautiful home of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, where he often said he spent 
the happiest days of his life. Our Chateau was 


WOULD YOU HAVE LIED 


103 


built upon a high hill with terraced gardens 
reaching to the pebbled beach of the Mediter- 
ranean. In the day time, when the sun grows 
warm, you can rest in the shade of the olive and 
orange trees that grow in the rose garden 
among and above the roses, and when the sea 
is at peace at night its moon-kissed waves as 
they wash the shore in sweet lullabies sing you 
to sleep. 

When spring was not far away, beautiful as 
had been our year at Toulon, Louise and I be- 
gan to long for the Old Homestead at Nash- 
ville. Both of us loved it. It was our real home, 
and Louise longed t& be close to the final rest- 
ing place of her father and mother, which she 
had cared for and looked after since her fa- 
ther’s death, so we returned to America. 

Soon the lovely summer would come, the 
beautiful June month, the loveliest of the year 
in the South, and together we could sit on the 
porch overlooking our rose garden; listen to 
the playing of the fountains, as every summer 
we had done since her childhood. 

And in the evening, beneath the dome of 
Heaven we’d watch the stars come out, “and 
guess which would be our home when life and 
love become immortal.” 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 

T HE Black Belt of Tennessee ran through 
Maury County. It was considered the most 
fertile section of the State, and was called the 
Black Belt because of the color of its soil. It 
was most suited to raising cotton, and through- 
out its broad area were many plantations with 
mansions “lifting their marble towers to 
heaven. ’ ’ 

Like feudal lords, here lived Tennessee’s 
most prosperous planters, with their large 
families. In this respect, the Black Belt of 
Tennessee corresponded to the Blue Grass re- 
gion of Kentucky. In one cotton was king, in 
the other fine horses and cattle. In both beau- 
tiful women reigned as queens. 

In one of the palaces of this wonderful cot- 
ton country there lived Colonel B , his wife, 

daughter, and four sons. This daughter had 
inherited the beauty, the charm, the wit and the 


104 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


105 


winsome lovliness that was her due from a de- 
voted mother. 

In the South it is customary for a young 
woman at an early age to make her dehut 
into society with what is called a ‘ ‘ Coming-Out 
Ball” in the fall of the year, to he followed the 
following summer by a visit to White Sulphur 
Springs, West Virginia. 

There the clans met, and fair women gather, 
while gallant beaux vie with each other for 
their hands and favors. Every cavalier is at 
his best, each woman looks her lovliest. Cotil- 
lions in the ballroom in the morning, cotillions 
in the ballroom at night ; promenades about the 
porches, strolls, and horseback rides over the 
mountains in the intervals — a Romeo for every 
Juliet, a Montague for every Capulet. 

Love-making and match-making seems in the 
very air, until the “ sweet summer-time, ’ ’ like 
the moon, begins to wane, and then the fight 
begins. Who is to lead the Grand March at the 
Great Ball at the season’s ending? Who is to 
be the Belle of the Year? 

Then the clans again meet — the old, the 
young, men and women — belles of past decades, 
beaux of half a century. Every one voices an 


106 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


opinion ; an audible vote without a ballot, a con- 
census of unanimity, an atmosphere of accord, 
that selects some favored one who shall at the 
great and final cotillion lead the Grand March 
and wear the Crown of Belledom. 

The summer of 1859 had been a wonderful 
season at White Sulphur, the greatest in many 
years. Beautiful women, not only from the 
South, but from the East and West were gath- 
ered there, with their friends, their admirers 
and their lovers. 

Among them was Colonel B , his wife and 

beautiful daughter. No father nor mother could 
have been prouder of their daughter than were 
they, not only for her intrinsic charm and lov- 
liness, which everyone saw and recognized, but 
for the admiration she incited and the followers 
in her train. 

Colonel B was choleric in his disposi- 

tion, positive in his conclusions, irascible when 
crossed, and imbued with the old English idea 
that all matches for his sons and daughter were 
matters that rested with himself alone. “The 
Heavenly idea” he scoffed at, affection was a 
matter of cultivation; it developed from proper 
selection and association. Young heads and 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


107 


hearts needed a wiser direction than they pos- 
sessed to choose their life’s partners. 

His beautiful daughter, when this subject 
was discussed, remained silent, but she was as 
positive as she was beautiful. Such women 
choose for themselves, and but once, when they 
marry. Where the heart prompts and the judg- 
ment approves, their selection is for all time, 
if love abides. Death nor Hell cannot separate 
or put them asunder, and eternity indissolubly 
binds and cements their souls — not with rods 
of steel, but with the strong arm of God. 

Among the many lovers of his daughter was 
the recently appointed Ambassador to Russia. 
Most persistently he had sought her hand ; had 
followed her to the Springs; had pictured the 
wonderful palace he had provided abroad, and 
over which he wished her as his bride to pre- 
side. Openly and avowdedly he had proclaimed 
his suit. 

He was handsome, intellectual, rich, com- 
manding in appearance, possessing qualities 
that most women favorably regard. But all 
seemed without avail. No one could under- 
stand why she avoided him. Without hesitation 
he admitted that he was a rejected lover. 


108 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


Only a woman can read her own heart, and 
sometimes she herself cannot, but she knows by 
a God-given grace, when she weighs her lovers 
in the balance, which touches strongest the cord 
that’s attuned to Cupid’s bow — which makes 
the heart beat quickest, which looks deepest into 
her soul. 

It soon became known, not only at the 
Springs, but elsewhere, that the newly ap- 
pointed Russian Ambassador had been refused 
by the Colonel’s daughter; and, it coming to 
his ears, he sent for her, and after a stormy in- 
terview she told him that only her own heart 
and none other would govern her when it came 
to choosing the man whom she would marry. 

Crossed in his wish to make this most desir- 
able match, as he considered it ; disappointed in 
his efforts to influence and prevail upon his 
daughter whom he loved with all his heart, ob- 
sessed with the false and mistaken idea that he 
should choose for his child rather than herself, 
in anger, against the protest of his wife, he 
bade her as a punishment for lack of obedience 
to his wishes to remain at his cottage for one 
week, to see no friends or callers, and to take 
no part in the festivities or dances at the hotel. 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


109 


Should she accede to his wishes, the punish- 
ment was at an end; should she remain obdu- 
rate, it was to continue. 

Imagine the situation, the trying situation; 
but this Southern Belle knew her own heart, 
and all the protests and punishments of a de- 
voted father, born under an old regime, edu- 
cated to a theory long relegated to the past, 
could prevail against her. 

So with sweet patience, she sat in tears and 
at times smiled through them at a condition so 
distressing and unjust. 

Before the Civil War, “Paradise Row” was 
considered a favored spot at White Sulphur 
Springs. It was most exclusive. The cottages 
on the row were early sought after by families, 
especially where there were older people 
among them who came for quiet and rest, as 
well as pleasure. 

The President’s cottage, often occupied by 
presidents of this country, was in this row, and 
the old pathway that led to Lover’s Leap was 
close by. At the Old White this row is still 
preserved, and today in the cottages you will 
find modern baths, electric lights, and every 
comfort. 



A SOUTHERN BELLE 


111 


At the time of this story candles, lamps and 
lanterns gave the only light you had to dress 
by, and at night direct your steps to and from 

the great hotel. Now Colonel B ’s cottage 

was located in Paradise Row. It was two stor- 
ies in height, with a large porch in front, and 
here day after day our heroine whiled away the 
hours, either reading or watching the strollers 
and the gay parties on their way to Lover ’s 
Leap, where upon the old trees, could be found 
the names of Southern belles and beaux carved 
there decades ago, and where they could climb 
upon the high rock on the mountain side and 
look down hundreds of feet into the depth of 
the precipice where, ’tis said, a beautiful White 
Sulphur Belle after a broken troth had, seek- 
ing surcease to sorrow, lept into eternity. 

Now it happened, one beautiful afternoon, 
our unhappy Belle was left entirely alone at 
her father’s cottage. So, laying aside the book 
she had been reading, without intending to dis- 
obey, but just for a little exercise, I am sure 
with no other intent, she took the path that led 
to Lover’s Leap; and, arriving there, she found 
the place deserted; so ensconcing herself com- 


112 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


fortably upon a huge boulder as a seat, she be- 
gan to cry. 

How it does seem that most things in life are 
destined ! The same day, on the noon train over 
the mountains there had arrived at the Springs 
a young planter whose home was in Arkansas, 
Peering by name. He was a student at the 
University of Virginia, and most of the sum- 
mer, while this great institution had been 
closed, he had remained at his college quarters, 
confining himself closely to the study of law. 

Now Deering was poor; the trip and return 
to Arkansas was a long and expensive one. So 
instead of going home, he concluded to visit 
White Sulphur for two weeks as a rest to his 
tired and overtaxed brain and body. On the 
plantation that had been in his family for many 
generations he and his father lived alone, and 
there Governor Deering, for he had once been 
the Governor of his State, ruled — more by com- 
mon accord and complimentary tolerance as a 
dethroned prince over his friends and neigh- 
bors — than by right of law. 

Years before, shortly after the loss of his 
wife, he had become involved in a cotton specu- 
lation, and as its resultant effect, after paying 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


113 


his debts through the sale of many slaves, there 
was left to him many hundreds of acres of rich 
land he found impossible to cultivate and uti- 
lize. Of course, he was a grumbler at a condi- 
tion brought about through his own folly, so 
he was hardly a cheery companion for his 
young and ambitious son. 

Deering, with his birth and breeding, was a 
gentleman. He was polished in his manners 
and address, tall and handsome ; a student and 
an athlete. There was a real honesty about him 
that attracted you, and a snap in his eyes that 
indicated temper and quick decision. He looked 
like a man hard to know, but once known, a 
made friend to be depended upon. Such men 
women always admire. 

So after being located at the hotel, Deering 
started for a stroll and instinctively, as we all 
do, he took the path to Lover’s Leap, where he 
found, sitting upon her boulder, our beautiful 
Belle suffused in tears. 

An inquiry into her distress, proffered help, 
if possible, and sympathy truly tendered, dis- 
pensed with an introduction. Human hearts, 
untouched before, respond to tears, and equil- 
ibriums undisturbed shatter at their flow. 


114 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


So Deering was like all of us men, his heart 
was deeply listed; and though the tears soon 
ceased, the mystery of them remained and 
would not be unfolded. 

Every day, without invitation, he took the 
same walk, and somewhere each day along the 
wooded road he chanced to meet this nymph of 
the mountains. It just seemed natural for both 
of them to walk at the same hour along the 
path each beautiful afternoon that led to Lov- 
er’s Leap. 

The Colonel in some disappointment began 
to notice that his daughter no longer protested 
and seemed to like the cottage better than the 
hotel. So before the week was over, growing 
repentent he declared the punishment had been 
enough and that he would insist no further up- 
on her marriage. 

Alas, alas ! it was too late, for Cupid’s quiver 
had lost two arrows and his bowstring in love ’s 
wild chase had not voiced a vainless mark. 
After this, Deering and the Colonel’s daughter 
saw each other often. They rode and walked 
together over the mountains, and danced to- 
gether. He was a beautiful dancer. He met 
everyone, both young and old. He always 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


115 


showed the gentleman that was born in him, 
and his company was sought after by all the 
lovely women at the Springs. The men liked 
him. He made friends with everybody. 

One night between dances while a gathering 
of gentlemen were laughing and chatting on the 
porch, a young planter from Mississippi slight- 
ly under the influence of wine, joined them, re- 
marking as he did so, 1 ‘ Think of it, Miss B 

of Tennessee has just refused to dance with 
me, the son of the richest planter in the South. 
However, I think I can survive it. She’s only 
a flirt at best and not half so beautiful as she 
thinks.” Deering stepped out from the gather- 
ing, caught him by the ear and boxed both his 
jaws. 

Dazed and stunned from the blows, without 
a word the young man turned on his heel and 
walked away. Of course, every one expected a 
duel the next morning, but instead this young 
son of the rich planter went to his room, packed 
his belongings and left the hotel on the mid- 
night train. The next day the affair got out 
and was the joke of the Springs, but in no way 
did it lessen Deering ’s popularity. 

The Grand March and Ball were close at 


116 


W ABF ARES OF THE HEART 


hand and the Colonel’s daughter had been se- 
lected the season’s belle. She was to lead the 
march with Deering, he having been invited by 
her to do so. That night her engagement to him 
was announced and the following October they 
were married at the Colonel’s beautiful home 
in Tennessee. 

While Deering and his bride were on their 
wedding trip, the old Governor, his father, died 
and the young groom was called home to Ar- 
kansas to take charge of the plantation, which 
had been left him. A few years after this the 
Civil War began, and Deering took his young 
wife with his family back to her mother, to the 
old homestead, “ Buena Vista,” near Colum- 
bia, where they had been married, and he en- 
listed in the Confederate service. 

As was the case so frequently during the war, 
the mother and daughter were left alone in the 
home with only a few faithful servants, Colonel 

B having died the year before. Then for 

several years the war waged with all its ter- 
rors, and even though Columbia was in the Con- 
federate lines, it was only on occasions that 

Colonel B ’s widow saw her sons or her 

daughter her husband. 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


117 


After the battle of Franklin, the bloodiest in 
the world’s history for the number of men en- 
gaged had been lost, the broken Confederate 
Army in its retreat passed through the grounds 
of the homestead where Deering’s wife and her 
aged mother with a few servants alone re- 
mained. In the parlor lay the dead bodies of 
Generals Cleburne, Stahl and Stansberry, with 
a Federal colonel whose name I do not now re- 
member. He had been taken prisoner, and dy- 
ing afterwards, his body was left by the retreat- 
ing army to be cared for in this Southern home. 
With those who had died with him, lovingly his 
body was placed by the side of his enemy and 
his foe. Each had died for his country. It had 
been done by two women — two women of the 
Confederacy. 

That night Deering’s wife gave premature 
birth to a child, and the next day the Federal 
army in pursuit of the fast flying enemy, fol- 
lowing its line of retreat, in passing this old 
home, its commanding officers ascertained there 
was a young mother in the house dangerously 
ill from childbirth and not expected to live. 

Now, it is an historical fact known not only 
in Tennessee, but elsewhere, that through the 


118 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


consideration, the gentility, the high standard 
of an enemy, these officers in command of the 
Federal Army, upon learning the condition of 
this young mother, ordered that a detour of the 
place be made, and that the army should not 
pass through it, placed a regiment of troops 
around and about the house and thereby safe- 
guarded the mother of a Southern child, the 
wife of an enemy, the offspring of a hated foe. 
Think of it! It’s a fact, and can be verified to- 
day by those who know and witnessed it. One 
woman turning aside an army of thirty thou- 
sand men. 

Hearts in their warefares — hearts of a foe — 
hearts in men that even in the heat of passion, 
in the passing of life, in the cry and struggle of 
battle, in the call of death, that are touched at 
the thought and in the presence of maternity. 
Is it a Divine impulse? Can you explain it? 
Not only the generals in command, but many 
others knew the reason for this turning of an 
army, and each- lent approval, for each had, or 
had had a mother, and those mothers’ hearts 
were beating somewhere on earth or in heaven 
for their sons. 

War is bad everywhere; war is cruel any- 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


119 


where; but in the war of the Rebellion brute 
instincts did not entirely dominate the man, 
and Hell was not given free reign to crime and 
loosened to its passions. In matters of battles, 
the fighting and killing spirit ever prevails — 
battles are not questions of magnitude — small 
forces fight just as hard as do large ones — the 
desire to kill, to destroy is always there, but 
among some peoples, the inconsideration of 
women does not develop the beast that lives in 
the breast of inhumanity. 

The writer recalls on one occasion overhearing 
a conversation between a Confederate veteran 
who had served in the Army of Tennessee and 
a young soldier who had just returned from the 
trenches in France — the latter was rather dis- 
posed to underestimate the magnitude and the 
fighting spirit displayed in the battles of the 
Rebellion when the veteran in some heat re- 
plied — “My boy, lead pencils wouldn’t have 
rubbers, if we didn’t make mistakes, so use 
your eraser and rub this impression off your 
brain. 

In the battle of Frankiln in one day’s fight 
between fifteen and twenty thousand men were 
killed and wounded and there were more dead 


120 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


men than wounded ones. We hardly knew 
what artillery was and did not commence to kill 
twentey miles away as the big guns do today — 
what artillery we had was made for solid shot, 
grape, chain and canister and when shells were 
used, it was generally with fuses and about one 
in ten exploded — so we had to fight close to- 
gether ; we charged in masses, and the bayonet 
was our chief weapon of offense. Cold steel 
had no terrors to any of us on either side, we 
fought to kill, not to maim — pointblank one hun- 
dred to an hundred-fifty yards was the maxi- 
mum distance for the Springfield rifle — it didn’t 
shoot a small jacketed steel bullet that when it 
hits, often wounds without your knowing it, but 
a Minnie ball, a chunk of lead almost as large 
as a canister shot, and when you were struck 
in the body, generally you didn’t know it, for 
your soul went visiting to another country. 

There were few trenches; we hardly knew 
what such things were, we fought mostly in the 
open, a wood if it offered itself, or behind stone 
and rail fences. If you were wounded there 
were no ambulances to move you, no litter car- 
riers to bear you, no angels of the Red Cross to 
nurse you, few doctors to care for you, and as 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


121 


has been said in the Civil War, as in the war of 
today, all battles are not pictures solely but 
realities of Hell.” 

It was my fortune shortly after the Civil 
War was over to know this beautiful young 
wife of my story, this woman of the South. His 
tory oft repeats itself, but as it does so, in its 
leaves it depicts among women no braver char- 
acter. 

In 1867, while on a visit to her old, revered 
and beloved mother, bent from the weight 
of years and aged from the sorrows of war, 
word came one day that Deering, her husband, 
had been wounded by an overseer on his planta- 
tion in Arkansas and that she must come at 
once. 

This woman of the Gods, in a book written by 
herself, “Memoirs of a Southern Woman,” in 
chaste and chosen language thus describes that 
return trip to her dying husband. 

“At last I drew near my destination, on the 
same boat on which eight years before as a 
blushing bride I had made my bridal trip to 
my loved one’s plantation. Each packet we 
passed down the Arkansas River, the Captain 
of our boat through his speaking trumpet would 


122 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


call to and ask how Colonel Deering was. Final- 
ly the last word came over the rushing waters, 
“He is dead.” 

God steels our hearts to sorrow, Time to some 
degree heals the open wound and Nature in the 
exercise of its laws in pity sometimes seems to 
wait, to hesitate, in its effort to stay an impend- 
ing blow. But the Law is inexorable. There is 
no remedy against what seems predestined. So 
still your heart and realize that God knows best : 
there is no separation in Death and Love is 
Love for all time, now and forever more. 

I remember on one occasion at my own home 
being honored by this remarkable woman 
whose beauty, character and fame in the South- 
land will never die, where at an evening’s gath- 
ering, another Southern mother and belle had 
been invited to meet her. 

Imagine the charm, the delight in seeing two 
such women together. Each so full of life’s ex- 
periences, each still beautiful, so chaste in their 
language, so refined, so polished. 

Full of the history of the South, anxious to 
gratify, desirous to entertain, to do something, 
to add to the pleasure of the evening. I recall 
a story told, which I give as best I can in the 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


123 


words of one of these grand dames. “I was a 
Kentucky girl, and my husband was a planter 
from Mississippi — our home was near Natchez 
— and the plantation ranged for miles along the 
banks of the Mississippi River. It was an odd 
change for a young woman, who had spent most 
her life in large cities to be moved to the coun- 
try, where there were but few neighbors and 
they far apart. Still I had my husband and I 
loved him, but at times, I presume it is the 
nature of us women, I longed for the lights, the 
crowds of the city, the gatherings of men and 
fair women, the music of the ball, the dance, the 
powdered hair, the rustle of silk and the odor 
of violets. I would grow tired of watching the 
negroes, the interminable fields of cotton with 
its beautiful flower, one day white, the next day 
pink, so my husband would often take me to 
New Orleans where he had business with his 
commission merchants. In those days great 
boats plied their way up and down the river be- 
tween St. Louis and New Orleans. They were 
more palaces than boats and it was a custom 
for the planters along the route to take their 
wives and daughters with them as a diversion 
from the monotony of country life on the banks 
of the Mississippi. 


124 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


The captains of these palaces were always 
gentlemen, and it was an honored post to be 
pilot on one of them, with their precious and 
beautiful cargoes. These boats were like float- 
ing clubs for the gentlemen, and many games of 
poker raged between them into the 4 4 wee small 
hours” of the morning after the dance was 
over and the ladies had retired. Gamblers 
from all over the country frequented them and 
often preyed upon the Southern planter in such 
games where his sense of hospitality and cour- 
tesy overcame his caution and better judgment. 
In this way these unprincipled men often were 
enabled to play in games of cards where each 
and every one was supposed to be a gentleman. 
When they were found to be otherwise, their 
punishment was rather summary. I recall my 
brother one night seizing a comparative 
stranger, caught cheating in the game, by the 
collar of his coat and throwing him bodily into 
the river. No notice was given of it to any of 
the officials, had there been, the boat would 
never have stopped; had he drowned, it would 
have been as a rat and thanks expressed for 
such riddance. 

On one of these trips to New Orleans, on a 
dark and bat like night, I was startled from my 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


125 


sleep by the call of fire. Before I could dress 
myself my husband was at my cabin’s door. 
How well I recall his words. He was a strong, 
powerful man, I do not believe there ever lived 
a braver one. In himself he had the most won- 
derful confidence, and seeing it in him I often 
thought it helped establish it in me. 4 ‘Don’t be 
afraid, wife,” he said, “we are together.” 

In a few moments the boat was all aflame, 
terror, excitement and distress reigned, men 
hardly dressed, women partially disrobed, 
mothers with their little children. Officers call- 
ing for every one to go to the upper decks — 
the attempting lowering of the boats, the call- 
ing of the pilot, still at his wheel, with the 
flames around him, giving out encouragement 
that we would soon reach the banks. In later 
days how often have I been reminded of that 
pilot, as- in reading Bret Harte’s Jem Bledsoe, 
“who died for men,” “I’ll hold her nozzel again 
the bank until the last galoot ’s ashore. ’ ’ I think 
he must have been the subject of that immortal 
poem for he lost his life in his endeavor to save 
our boat. 

When my husband had almost carried me to 
the upper deck, already crowded with the 
screaming and affrighted passengers, without 


126 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


hesitation he broke off the door of a cabin, 
pulled his coat from off him, tore his suspend- 
ers from his body and with them tied two of our 
arms together — with his teeth and disengaged 
hand. As he did so not a word was spoken be- 
tween us, I knew what it meant, “not even 
Death shall separate us, ? ’ but he did not say it. 
He wanted courage, faith and hope to remain 
within my breast. I cannot describe at this 
time my sensations, I only know I believed in 
him, I trusted him, and like a docile child I 
obeyed him. I was not terrorized as were the 
others and when with his unfettered hand still 
holding the cabin door, he said, “jump with 
me,” together we plunged into the deep, the 
dark, the widely flowing river. It seemed that 
we would never come to the surface, when we 
did, all he said, was, “Courage wife, courage, 
you come from a line of women who have no 
fear.” 

I held to the cabin door, while he swam as 
best he could. Soon the river was filled with 
people, and as we drew farther from them I 
could still hear their sad cries for help. By the 
light of the burning boat we could see the dis- 
tant banks of the river. It seemed that we 
would never reach them, but by my side was the 


A SOUTHERN BELLE 


127 


man, the real man, whose name I bore, who was 
the father of my children, I trusted him, and 
therefore I did not fear.” 

For a little while after this story no one 
spoke, and then this wonderful woman from the 
State of the writer’s birth, Tennessee, rose 
from her chair, went to an open piano and from 
memory, with no notes, played selections from 
Wagner, Mozart, Litz and others of the old 
Music Masters. 

Both these women had long passed Life’s 
allotted limit, and yet were the youngest in the 
gathered company. It is of such women the 
men of the South were born. Such women who 
brought sons, Americans, into the world to 
shield, honor and protect not only them but 
their country. Such women whose grandsons 
are now fighting in “No Man’s Land” and daily 
sailing over oceans, beneath whose surface glide 
steel and hidden monsters made ready to de- 
stroy and engulf them. 

To the descendents of these women there is 
no terror. Neither bayonet nor steel can stop 
them. Death has no sting. No earth made Hell 
affrights them, for they go to fight, to die if 
needs be, for the great cause of Democracy, for 
the distressed Peoples of the World. The sun 


128 


WARFARES OF THE HEART 


glitters upon their steel and jacketed helmets, 
the red cross decorates their banners, the music 
of the fife and drum stirs their souls as with 
steadfast purpose they give themselves to up- 
hold and battle for the Liberty of Mankind. 

God bless them, true Americans that they are, 
and doubly bless their American grandmothers 
that have left them this charge to fulfill, this 
duty to perform. Such young men are the souls 
of our great Republic, and the hearts of their 
mothers beat in common unison as they make 
the offering of their sons to their brothers 
across the sea, to America, the “Home of the 
brave and the Land of the free.” 

In conclusion, I wish to say that this South- 
ern Belle of my story still lives. She has now 
reached her eighty-seventh year, not of age, but 
of youth. 

Time has no years for her, and Life is a dawn 
of mornings, days of Sunlight run through 
setting suns, and hours are filled, not with 
“Loves labors lost,” but good deeds done. 

The touch of Paradise dwells in her heart 
and through her eyes shines the light of her 
pure and hallowed soul. 

The End 









































































% 

















































ft 





















































* 




i 


























































* 
















































. 












' 

















*v 











































































































. 

. 
































